"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
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topsecret finished!

i love it!

[for project specs, go here.]

 

 

 

 

comment [11]

posted 27 February 05 & filed under topsecret

crisis averted

i did a little measuring this morning (i woke up an hour early to do this – is there any surer proof that knitting has become quite a priority?) and sure enough, the gauge was exactly 12 stitches in 4” (well, 12 and 1/8.. but basically on) at the beginning but quickly changed to 13 stitches in 4”.

thanks to a suggestion from my great secret pal, i’m going to do the smart thing: re-swatch! yup, tonight. i’ll knit it up on 10 1/2s and then on 11s and then stretch it all out and mist a bit with water and see what happens.

re-measuring the body, it didn’t seem quite so small as it did last night. definitely not as loose as the picture looks but not so bad either. now i’m thinking i could just make the large size sleeves, yoke, and neck, and that might be ok. hmmm. we’ll see after tonight’s already planned events.

in other news, ask jeeves bought bloglines! what does this mean? it’s still unclear though a lot of people assume we’ll start seeing ads on bloglines—irritating to say the least, though many would argue ‘free’ can’t last forever. however, there are always alternatives and, i’m sure, even better alternatives will be cropping up in the unhappy case bloglines gets totally evil. plus, bloglines makes it real easy to export (using OPML) your list of blogs so you can easily switch aggegators if you want to. anyway, for now, bloglines still is the best news aggregator out there.

(btw, this news came from a blog i just stumbled on: napsterization.org. it’s edited by a grad student at berkeley’s sims school and “focuses on positive, fair-use and legal examples of peer-to-peer file sharing of works approved by their creators for sharing”. sounds good to me.)

also, just stumbled on this: according to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 5% of internet users in the u.s. in 2004 used syndication technologies (i.e. rss) to read “news headlines and other content.”

comment [2]

posted 7 February 05 & filed under topsecret, web-talk

i'm such a noob-boob

once again once again, i’m confounded and exasperated with my attempts at making a large comfy sweater.

i just finished the body section of topsecret and realized, horrors, that it’s too freaking small. i was on gauge, i swear i was, when i first started but this friggin’ yarn is not fun to knit with and i guess my poor hand cramping up for days should have tipped me to re-check my gauge. but i didn’t. so this sweater, that is supposed to be easy for an advanced beginner is stumping me. and i hate that.

how does it fit? well, i slid on the body section and it’s… body-hugging. if i pull at it a bit, it stretches out to what it should be, but… i don’t know about acrylic – does it bounce back? i have no idea and i’m sooo frustrated right now. i’m doing the medium size and so the bottom is supposed to be 42” and right where it will meet the arms it’s supposed to be 38” wide. well, what i’m getting is about 38” at the bottom and 34” at the top. way off.

what should i do? i know if it’s at all body-hugging-ish i’m not going to wear it since the whole idea was to have a big sweater. but the idea of frogging that yarn… :shudder:. and then, if i do frog it, should i switch to larger needles or should i just knit a larger size?

this weekend did not go as nicely as i hoped it would. and this, right now, feels like the straw that’s breaking this camel’s back. argh… one thing i can hope is that sooner or later i will learn to respect that crazy thing called “swatching” and understand it’s an ongoing thing until the sweater, or whatever, is complete. aghhhhh.

screw it! i’m off to rent a movie and not deal with this right now.

update: did a ton of laundry, painted my nails, dyed my hair, and watched silly old movies. yeah, i feel a bit better now. g’night.

comment [1]

posted 6 February 05 & filed under topsecret

illusions

happy friday ~ i hope everyone is as excited about this weekend as i am—- and what do i have planned that is so exciting? nothing. yup, nothing nada zilch. there’s lot of things i should do, but there’s a mile-wide chasm between should and must. phew.

like so many out there, i’m trying to not slow down but literally cut off my horrible spending habit in regards to knitting. i was doing good for a while and then i decided that buying patterns, magazines, books, needles and other non-use-up-able things were really investments and thus could not in the least bit be considered ‘shopping’. well, i’ve nipped that bad idea in the, well, not the bud, but at least mid-bloom. (in defense: the defuzzer to the right i bought weeks ago but only days ago bought the required batteries.)

my topsecret sweater is inching along – i don’t like the yarn (bernat’s illusions) one bit, and my fingers are unhappy. ah well, my illuisions have been shattered. (such a dork, i know.)

i love my new defuzzer – cheap and so fun to use. this is what it took off my felted tab bag i made in august that already had a ton of fuzzies on them.

also, last week i mentioned laundry and sweeping/mopping my place. well, the great thing about a world-class procrastinator is that i’ve built up so much stuff i have to do that when my procrastination-bug kicks in, i procrastinate from doing the things i should be doing (i.e. laundry) by doing other things i should’ve done months and months ago (i.e. finally organizing my bills and school papers). so, yup, this weekend i still have a ton of laundry to do (in the last pic you can see trouble daring me to move her from my laundry pile) and floors to clean. or there’s that dirty tub that could use some scrubbing…

lastly, i’ve given up on the whole idea of keeping my bloglines subscriptions to equal my age – for those of you that had already predicted that, kindly keep your gloating to yourselves.

p.s. check out my new re-design for ucla’s saa chapter – just went live this morning.

comment [2]

posted 4 February 05 & filed under busy bee, topsecret

short and sweet

hi secret pal! here’s my questionnaire. ;)

and to everyone else, i need some help! i’m starting knitty’s topsecret (i am determined to make a sweater that is comfy and big on me!) but i’m immediately thrown off by the gauge. it says ‘12 sts = 4” over st st using size 10.5 needles’. ok, that’s 12 stitches horizontally, which hallelujah, i do get on 10 1/2s, but what about row-wise/vertically?

also, if you made this, what size did you make – do you wish you’d gone up or down a size?

i must report that yesterday i walked into a gorgeous local yarn store (with usually a snobby staff, but yesterday someone actually came up and asked me if i needed help and seemed really sweet; oh and tracy ullman was in there buying all this beautiful $$ yarn!) and walked out without buying a thing. i was pretty cranky for the next hour or so but it still counts as quite an accomplishment. (sad, really.)

it’s a beautiful sunny day and my apartment is a mess. so, off to do laundry and some mopping (yuck).

comment [1]

posted 30 January 05 & filed under busy bee, topsecret

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