winged orange

Ever have one of those days where you say to yourself, “Man, this is going to be a pretty good day! I have stuff I need to do, but it’s all neatly planned out, and when that’s done, I can relax!”? Today was one of those days.

And then I realized that I am a fucking moron.

Every year at school, we have Field Day, where we take the kids to a park, set up a million activities, feed them sugary popsicles, and allow them to run themselves ragged. Every year, each classroom has a theme and makes shirts to match the theme. Last year, our theme was video games and I was in charge of the shirts. Because this was my first time really dealing with transfers, I bought some that were not good for the shirts and which left some whitish peeling around them. Also, I did not reverse the images before I printed them, so I had to run out and buy new transfers.

This year, I’m in charge of the shirts again. This year, our theme is our school’s “Most Wanted”. I bought bright orange shirts, and everyone made a wanted poster to put on the back. The shirts are awesome, so it stands to reason that the finished product should be awesome. I was especially excited because I was able to find everyone’s size this year. Last year, there seemed to be a bit of a run on the color we needed. I even made a list of who needed what size so I knew what to buy. So organized.

This year, I KNEW which transfers not to buy, and bought the ones for colored shirts instead. This year, I was smart and reversed all the images before I printed them onto the transfers. I was going to make the shirts at home this weekend and bring them in on Monday, well ahead of schedule, since Field Day is Thursday and I have to work job #2 in the evening Monday through Wednesday. That was the plan.

This year, however, I was not smart. I (incorrectly) assumed that the images would need to be printed in reverse. I (stupidly) did not read directions first and dove right in. I woke up today, all ready to make the best Field Day shirts known to man. I pulled out the directions to see if the shirts needed to be washed first, and saw this:

“Unlike the [brand name]’s White Transfers, DO NOT print the image in reverse or as a mirror image.”

FUCK. MY. LIFE.

So now I’m going out to buy three new packs of transfers. Also, I have to find some way to cover my ass on Monday, because I only have the images to reprint half of the transfers. So I’m going need to either admit to my coworkers and my students that I am irrevocably dunce-like and fucked up the transfers AGAIN, or come up with something that sounds plausible to cover my ass until Tuesday when I can fix the remaining shirts. I might tell them that the transfers got damaged in the rain and that the new ones require forward-facing images. And then tell the kids that the shirts need to be washed first. Yeah. That sounds good.

You know, if this story was on fmylife.com, I would totally have clicked “you deserve it,” because I’m always on my dad’s ass and Scott’s ass about not reading directions, and then I go and do it. TWICE.

I have other things to blog, too, including new yarn and a spinning failure. We’ll get to that later. Right now, I need to go get these new transfers and have a drink. A good, stiff drink. Preferably one that will put me into a coma.

This represents the two halves of my personality…summed up in lolcat.

I need to blog more. I also need to my to be more interesting so I have stuff to blog about. My schedule these days is kind of repetitive. Teach, tutor, eat, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a wonder my life doesn’t have a repetitive strain injury from all that…nothing.

Scott has decided that we are in a rut and we need to suck it up, spend a little more money, and go out a little more often. And to put theory into practice, we’re going out this weekend. In theory, we’re going to Cape May to go whale watching, but my brother graduates from college at 10 AM on Saturday morning, Cape May is an hour and a half away, and the whale tour only runs at 1 PM, so chances are, we’re not going to make it. We’re thinking we’ll go to Cape May anyway, play some mini golf (because it’s always more fun when you play it at the shore), get some food, walk on the beach, and visit the Cape May Zoo. I really love the Cape May Zoo. It’s large, it’s clean, and it’s free, although I always make a donation when I visit because it all goes to the animals anyway.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on the blog (but I know I bitch about it all the time on Plurk), but I hate my second job. Hate. With the burning passion of a thousand suns. H-A-T-E. It’s a hatred I don’t really understand. A good deal of it stems from the fact that it tacks two hours onto my already-eight-hour day, and usually my students are tough as it is, so by the time it gets to be 4:00 (when I start my shift at job #2), I’m already sort of done. I think the rest of it stems from the fact that the number of SAT hours I tutor has been greatly reduced, so even though I’m working the same number of hours, I’m making about $18 less a week. Doesn’t sound like much, but when you make $88 a week, it adds up. I’ve been trying to justify quitting for a while, but with my student loan paysments being so expensive, I just couldn’t see it.

Well. I recently consolidated my loans from Columbia. The interest rate is comparable to what I’m paying now (for two of the loans I consolidated, it’s equal, and for the other, it’s .2% less), and the repayment term is comparable to what I currently have. Also, I’m with a government agency, so when I call up to ask questions, I get someone who speaks English, and presumably won’t forge my documents like SallieMae did. The best news? My payments will be roughly $200 less a month. Oddly enough, that’s roughly what I make at my second job.

The logical part of my brain says, “Don’t quit! Suck it up! You could use the money!” The rest of my brain, the part that’s tired and angry and says every day, “Maybe my student will call out and I can go home, so screw not getting paid! It’s only $22 anyway!” is telling me to quit. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m quitting. I’m sticking it out until the end of the school year, but I’m quitting. I need a break, and yeah, I’ll have a little less in my pocket, but I think there’s something to be said for mental health. There’s no reason for me to stay, not when I hate it that much. I live at home, so my only bills are my car insurance and student loans. So why the hell not? :)

So…what’s new with you?

Happy birthday to me! :D I turned 25 yesterday, and it was a pretty good day. I did Maryland Sheep & Wool in the morning with Scott and my friend Lizz (neither of whom are knittin’ folk, but came out and supported my habit anyway), and the drove back to Jersey in the evening for dinner, cake, & the Kentucky Derby with my family. We’re all allowed two picks in my house, a favorite and a longshot. My favorite choice came in 15th, but my longshot choice won – I called Mine That Bird in the beginning because of Lori. ;) Too bad I didn’t put any real money on him; I’d have made back what I spent at MDS&W with a $2 bet!

So Sheep & Wool was a good time. I like Rhinebeck better, but that’s only because I’m used to it and because I found it less crowded, odd as that is. I think Rhinebeck is just hosted on a bigger space. I think the barns are physically bigger, and I know several vendors take up more than one stall there. Also, we were on a time schedule at S&W, which I never am at Rhinebeck. We were only there about 3 hours, and I still managed to come away with a lot. Some photo highlights; click for bigger versions:

I got some amazing stuff, and the best part is most of it is from vendors I either can’t find or didn’t hit up at Rhinebeck. Scott bought me some, Lizz bought me some, and my change from Elmer J. Piglington bought the rest. The whole haul looks like this:

Individually, from the left (and with links to flickr images of everything individually) are: 70/30 Cormo/Bamboo with matching Firestar in Seascape and Cherrygold (8 oz. total, 4 oz. each), a 4 oz. ball of natural Cormo combed top, 4 oz. of Black Diamond carbonized bamboo, a skein (561 yards!) of Creatively Dyed Beaches sock yarn in Blue Fields, and 4 oz. of turquoise alpaca/merino. The Cormo was from Winterhaven Farms (no website), the Black Diamond is from Misty Mountain Farms, the sock yarn is from Creatively Dyed, and the alpaca/merino is from Thistledown Alpacas.

It was a good day. :) It was great to see Lizz, and to buy yarn, and finally pick a Derby winner on my birthday. My mom made porterhouse steaks for dinner, and we had cookie cake with Cake Batter Batter Batter! ice cream (cake batter with cookie dough and brownie) from Cold Stone for dessert. It was a nice day. :)

Dude. So I went on spring break on April 9. It’s now April 19 and the month is half over, which is pretty crazy and really exciting. We have a full week of school and then four days, a day of in-service, and then my birthday. I’ll be 25 on May 2, which I feel is a little nuts and which cannot possibly be correct, as I am nowhere near where I wanted to be with my life at 25. However, it should hopefully involve something sheepy and yarny, and that’s exciting. After that it’s a couple of weeks til Memorial Day, and after that, it’s just a few weeks to the end of school and a couple of weeks off before the summer program starts.

So over my spring break, I was busy. I went to three or four different doctor’s appointments, took the bird to the vet, visited with Scott, and did crafty stuff. The plan was to finish spinning and plying for Aeolian, and be knitting by…two days ago. The plan did not happen.

Seed Beads on Plying Thread

I spent the better part of the day on Wednesday stringing beads onto my shiny metallic plying thread. I strung what had to be close to 500 size 10/0 clear seed beads by hand. Damn were my eyes crossed after that! I’m not looking forward to doing it again for the second batt. Anyway, I was smart and put the whole project down after that and figured I’d pick it up for plying on Thursday. I started a test-ply and realized that my original thought of plying the single with the plying thread wasn’t going to work. It kept wanting to make super-coils, which I didn’t want, and the yarn itself was not very strong.  I made an executive decision to split the first bobbin of singles into 2 and create a 2-ply + thread. I got out my mom’s mail scale and weighed an empty bobbin. Then I weighed the full bobbin, subtracted the weight of the empty bobbin, divided by 2, and added the weight of the empty bobbin back on to give the weight of a bobbin + half the weight of the singles. I wound and measured, wound and measured, and finally came up with two roughly equal bobbins. (Yes, I’m aware that this is painfull nerdy. I blame the fact that I teach math.)

Plying thread & singles bobbin

Then I realized that I have a two-bobbin lazy kate and what really equated to three bobbins. Dammit. I spent forever trying to rig a makeshift kate out of a shoebox and a DPN, which would have worked, except the thread kept winding off onto the DPN and not pulling out. So finally I scrapped it and let the thread bobbin roll around in the shoebox while I plied. That worked out pretty well. Plying was slow, though. I had to keep stopping to slide the huge line of beads farther down the thread so I could ply three or four yards, then lather, rinse, repeat. I had been at it for hours and had to go eat dinner, so I put the plying down, which was the biggest mistake ever. When I came back, I had a huge knot in my thread, right around the beads. Huge. So huge I couldn’t untangle it. I finally just gave up and broke the thread, releasing about a hundred beads. I cried a little. I cursed. I threw things. I posted a hateful plurk that included some colorful language. I considered burning everything. Finally, I sucked it up and restrung the hundred or so beads I’d lost. Then I put the whole thing in time out.

Plied Snow Moon laceweight

Even though the resulting yarn is gorgeous (see left), it has pissed me off, in many ways:

• The thread broke. I had to restring beads.
• It took six hours to ply 67 yards.
• There are knots in my skein where the singles drifted apart (which is my fault), and I couldn’t spit splice them because the fiber is superwash.
• I need 400 yards. I may not have enough even with both batts; I’m not sure how much more yardage I can squeeze from what’s left on the first two bobbins.
• I need to spin 2 more oz/another batt into superfine singles.
• I need to string another 500 (pardon my language) fucking seed beads. Cry.
• This is not done yet.

Toe-Upkins

To distract myself while the Aeolian yarn is in time-out, I started another KAL of 2 with Katie. This time we’re knitting Nutkins, but we’re doing them toe-up. These are my first toe-up socks, and my first time converting from a cuff-down pattern, and am finding both things surprisingly easy and fun. I made my toe a bit too pointy, but it looks fine on, so meh. I’ll know for next time. I feel like I may knit everything toe-up from now on, but I haven’t done the heel yet, so I’ll get back to you on that. Yarn is DIC Smooshy in Chinatown Apple, and I’m doing them one at a time on two US1 circs, which is going swimmingly. :)

Oh, also, before I go. I leave you with a new picture of my babybird:

Lori, April 2009

The Easter Beagle was good to me this year, and left me a new camera! I’m so excited; my old camera was 3 megapixels and so huge, it was like toting around a gold ingot. This one is 8 MPs, and nice and slim. Also, it comes with all kinds of software, including some that lets you stitch together panoramic pictures. I’m going to have some awesome Disney photos when we get back from our trip in January!

I spent a little time today playing with my camera and taking random pictures of…everything. Some of them are a little blurry, because admittedly I’ve not read the manual yet; I just sort of starting pointing and shooting. They’re all Flickr photos, so click to embiggen/for a description. :)

Read the rest of this entry »

May the Easter Beagle be kind to you and yours. :)

The votes have been tallied, and the winner was the Aeolian shawl, which had three votes (four, if you include mine). I also finished spinning up my Citrus singles, so I’m free to start spinning for the shawl! The Citrus Spirogyras will make an appearance soonish; I’m letting the singles rest a little on the bobbins before I ply them, partially because I had better results when I did that last time, and partially because I just can’t be bothered right now. ;) The spinning is done on them, and that’s what’s important.

I have all my stuff for the shawl ready to go:

The two Snow Moon batts (the color is off in this photo; I need a better camera!), packs of beads, and plying thread. The beads are size 10/0 seed beads and they’re kind of a pearlescent white. The thread is just Coats & Clark quilting thread, in a metallic pearl color. That will be my “plying thread,” and where the beads will be strung. This is going to be glorious. Katie and I decided it should be called “Desert Stars,” because the fiber is very sky-like and Aeolian is a desert-inspired pattern.

And just to drive the point home…I unrolled the batts this morning. Again, not a color-true photo, but, really, don’t you want to roll in this stuff? Because I completely do. (Click to embiggen.)

Clearly, I have delusions of grandeur. I recently bought 4 oz. batts from Enchanted Knoll Farm in the Snow Moon colorway. My camera sucks, so I don’t have my own photo, but I can link you to the “sold item” page for the one I bought: here you go. I’ll wait while you drool. ;)

Somewhere between when I ordered the batts and when I got them, I decided I would spin a beaded yarn from them, much like the one described in this blog post here, because that is the yarn that inspired me to do it. I had no idea it was so easy until I saw it done on Ravelry! I went out and bought the beads and a $2 beading kit (needles, bead picker-upper, that sort of thing), and I’m still searching for plying thread that goes with the batts like I think it should.

Somewhere between the bead purchasing and yesterday, I decided it needed to be a shawl when I was done, because I couldn’t think of anything else that would show off beautiful handspun, beaded yarn like that as well as a shawl would. Then I saw that fabulous beaded yarn that I just linked turn into a beaded stole: this one, actually. I almost died. That was it. I had to have a shawl. Never mind that the yarn hasn’t been spun yet, or that I’ve never really knit lace, or that it’s a big project. I need a shawl.

The problem is, which ONE? I kicked around patterns with Katie for like an hour, and I’m still not any better off. So far, these are my contenders:

• Woodland Shawl [ravelry link] – Pros: It’s rectangular, which I know from experience tends to look good on me, as all my wraps for prom and other fancy-dress occasions were rectangular. Also, I know it looks nice in handspun. Cons: It’s rectangular, which is going to be boring to knit because it’s basically an oversized scarf.
• Aeolian Shawl [ravelry link] – Pros: It’s made for handspun, and designed in multiple sizes, which is great for a short girl who wants a shoulderette, not a blanket. Cons: It has nupps, which I don’t know if I will like.
• Laminaria [ravelry link] – Pros: It’s beautiful! And it looks good in blue. Cons: It’s freaking huge.
• Swallowtail [ravelry link] – Pros: It’s smaller, and also looks good in blue. Cons: I’m not crazy about the main part of the shawl, the little circle thingies.
• Snow Drop [ravelry link] – Pros: It’s very pretty, and the snow theme goes with the Snow Moon theme/feel of my batts and the beads I chose. This was originally my first choice, but then I overthought.  Cons: This shawl looks gigantic in the finished projects on Ravelry.
• Gail [ravelry link] – Pros: The lace is wonderfully open, and looks stunning in blue. Also can be modified for different sizes pretty easily. Cons: There’s no edging, which is what I liked about a lot of the above shawls.

So. With all those in mind, which do you think? Do you have something different to suggest? Suggest away! I do have some shawl preferences: typically, I like triangular better than rectangular, but am open to either. I am short, so the shawl should either not be gigantic or allow me to size it. Must look good in blue. :)

Thanks for the input, guys. I need the help.

…of the bus that hit me?

Dear god, I am so sick. I have this god-awful cold, presumably caught from some of my students. On a normal day, our little class has 7 kids in it (the perks of being a private school). Yesterday, we had three. THREE. The other four were out sick. Craziness.

I’d felt kind of under the weather the past few days, but today I just feel like I’ve been made into roadkill. I threw up this morning. I’ve been mostly laying in bed all day, alternately sleeping, moaning, and ingesting copious amounts of daytime cold medicine. Nothing sucks like having a weekend and having to waste it because you’re too incapacitated to do anything productive.

I had a list, too. I needed to do a million things. For starters, I was going to start calling around to schools and leaving messages to see if they were looking for tutors in the short term and teachers in the long term. I was going to look at grad schools and see where I wanted to apply and what I’d need to do. I was going to check with ETS and see if I need to retake the GREs, even though I think I know that answer already. I was going to finish up my swap box, mail it, and go to the bank. I was going to spin and knit socks. I was going to hit the craft store to get plying thread for this beaded yarn I want to spin.

I did…nothing. Except sleep, moan, and medicate. I can’t focus long enough. I feel lucky I’ve managed to make it this far. And in fact, I’m feeling a little woozy. Back to bed with me.