Friday, March 31, 2006

Overheard in New York

Woman on cell: Caviar? Nigga, ain't no caviar in Harlem.
--57th & 8th


This site is amusing. Yeah, I'm late to the Internet. Shut up.

I Inadvertantly Disabled Comments

OK, so it's easy to accidentally disable comments in blogger, I have found. I thought that by switching to "new posts do not have comments" or whatever the setting is--I thought by using that setting, I could make it so I don't have "0 comments" listed under the entries, but when someone does comment, then I would have the comment note appear. I thought it seemed silly to have a note about comments there if there were none. I kinda thought it would just put the word "comment" there or something and allow people to comment.

Of course, I was wrong. Thanks, feather! Apparently, what I did means that any new posts I put up will not allow comments, which I would have realized if I had thought about it for a second and looked at the blog. There was just nothing in that spot, instead of the word "comment" with a link to comment, which is how *I* would have designed it if I knew how. hehe.

Sometimes I'm a little slow. Sorry about that. So, yeah, I removed my whiny "I'm sick" blog, because, really, there's no point in that. I also reposted the one about praying.

Let's talk more about that, shall we?

My own personal suspicion is that praying for someone doesn't have any effect on them; however, I'm not saying I think people should stop praying. Praying is cool and if you find it helpful or fulfilling or enlightening or even erotic, have at it! (:

So, I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm actively dissing folks who pray. That's not my style.

I guess I do something like praying. I hope. I have these little inner monologues where I say in my head "please let such-and-such happen" or "please let work get out early tonight." They are--sort of--little wishes.

Wishes. Yeah, I make a lot of those. Always have. Don't know why. Ain't gonna stop. My attitude about wishes is that if they come true, great, but I'm not counting on it. I'm pleased when they come true, but I don't think I had a damn thing to do with it.

Are wishes just prayers for people who don't believe in God?

"I'll Pray For You."

No thank you. I'd rather you didn't.

"...the complication rate was significantly higher for the 352 of 601 patients (59%) who were confident that others were praying for them, compared with the 315 of 604 (52%) of patients uncertain of such prayers (RR 1.14, 95% CI 1.02-1.28) but who received them, Dr. Benson and colleagues reported in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal. The primary outcome was complications in 30 days....The complication rate was 51% (304 of 597) for those who were uncertain of intercessory prayers but did not get them."

Now, I'm not saying this means anything at all, but it sure looks like the people who got prayed for were worse-off in the end.

"At enrollment, most subjects did expect to receive prayers from others, regardless of their participation in the study. We also recognize that subjects may have prayed for themselves. Thus, our study subjects may have been exposed to a large amount of non-study prayer, and this could have made it more difficult to detect the effects of prayer provided by the intercessors."

This has got to be one of the more humorous studies that I've seen. Obviously, it doesn't mean anything. Now, if there had been some massive recovery rate among the patients who had been prayed for, well, then I'd have to take it a bit more seriously. But, all in all, the numbers are fairly even. So, yeah, I think I'll pass on the prayer anyway, though. How about a hug? (:

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Pitch

So, yeah, I'm going to finish Tempting with the color called "Pitch." It's black. I think I'll put a black ribbon on it, too. I think it might look lame, but whatever. I don't feel like redoing it. I still can't figure out why I'm short on yarn. Oh well.

Of course

I don't have enough yarn to make the medium size either. hehe. I am an inch and a half past the joining of the sleeves to the body, and I have about 40 feet of yarn left. The pattern says I have at least six inches left to go. Six inches of a 224-stitch circumference piece. Oops! Either I heavily modify the top of this shirt, or I make the tippy-top portion a different color. Maybe this shirt is destined to be two colors. hehe.

I did see someone who modified the top of the shirt by doing some decreases and making it more of a normal shirt and less of an off-the-shoulder kind of thing. Maybe I can do something to that effect. I get the impression that I will need to put all of these stitches on waste yarn and put it on before I decide to modify the top. As long as my boobs are covered, I can start doing some decreasing, I think. I shuld have known this would happen.

Oddly, I'm not really very upset about it. Maybe it's because I have the hemp knitting waiting in the wings. Maybe it's because I'm having a good learning experience. *shrug*

Stitch holder, eh? Is that the thing that looks like a giant safety pin? I kind of wondered what that was for. I bought this kit in the beginning with two sets of needles and various other stuff that was completely foreign to me. I still don't know what some of that junk is. hehe.

So, there's another thing about the Tempting pattern that is irritating. The directions are wrong. Seriously. If you follow the directions as they are written, you end up with a weird piece of yarn running from front to back on the inside of each sleeve. I have gathered, from the knittyboard and from web surfing, that you must BREAK THE YARN before putting those 12 (or 14 or whatever) stitches from the sleeve onto waste yarn. You have to either do that or just knit the 12 stitches THEN placve them on waste yarn.

Of course, I didn't realize this until the problem had already occurred. I am winging it. I cut the offensive piece of yarn and knotted the hell out of it on front and back of each sleeve. I don't understand why the pattern has not been corrected on knitty, but it's pretty clear that the pattern, as written, yields unsatisfactory results. See here for a better explanation. meh.

Actually, I just had a thought. Since I am knitting on my Denise interchangables, I can make the circumference of what I am knitting very large. That means that I won't have to transfer to waste yarn to try it on. I can just make one gigantic set of circular needles. That's good news, because I didn't really want to mess with that.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

"spare dpns"

So, they tell me to put some of my stitches on "spare dpns," as if that's something I have. I have ONE spare dpn, because I am only using four out of the set of five. I guess I should have though about that. meh. I crammed them all (it's only 46 stitches) onto one dpn. Hopefully it won't make my sleeves all wonky. I'm just going to be knitting those stitches off the dpn soon anyway. *shrug* Nothing I have in my office is an appropriate size.

Spring Knitting

So, Tempting is moving right along. I hit 14 inches of ribbing last night, put some of those stitches on waste yarn for what will become the bottom of the sleeves, set the main body aside, and started on the sleeves.

The sleeves. *sigh* I hate double pointed needles. Hate. They make my hands hurt; however, I am going to commit myself to making these sleeves on dpns because I need to get used to using them. Last time I used them, I gave up and learned the Magic Loop technique because my hands were feeling tingly with dpns. That's a cop out. I'm sure it's just my hands getting used to doing something new. I remember how much they hurt the first week I was knitting, so I need to just suck it up and forge ahead. It's actually only three inches on each sleeve on dpns, then I join to the body and knit in the round, so, there's really no reason to bitch about it.

On the hemp shirt for my friend, T, front: I got the yarn and pattern yesterday (no picture of the pattern, in case she happens to find my blog)! woot! It's good timing, too, because I'll finish Tempting this week, and I'll need something new to do. I wound up one hank of the hemp and remembered why I need a ball winder and swift. Yeah, I got a little tangled, but I worked it out pretty quickly. Have I mentioned I really like untangling yarn? That is not sarcasm; my knitting buds are well-aware they can toss me their gnarled messes and I will gleefully dissect them for hours.

What else? Hm. I have a bunch of Knit Picks Sierra in charcoal that wants to become a sweater. If I start soon, maybe I can finish it before it gets cold again. hehe. Haven't picked the sweater yet. At first, it was going to be Banff, but now I am not so sure. I have The Yarn Girls' Guide to Beyond the Basics and there are some simple sweater patterns in there, too. Also, someone has told me I should get this book, The Sweater Workshop, so maybe I'll do that and make my own. It would be nice to really learn about sweater construction rather than just follow one pattern.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Tempting Update

So, yeah, Heatherfeather, has given good advice. I have started over on Tempting again and am knitting the medium size this time. I'm glad, too, because I think that the large might slide right off my shoulders; indeed, I am wondering if any size of this pattern would slide right off my shoulders. I guess I'll find out when I'm done. Also, the worst thing that could happen with knitting the medium is that it's too small for me. If that turns out to be the case, I'll just find someone smaller than me to give it to.

So, I'm four inches into it this time, and, man this is fast knitting. I'm getting faster and faster. woohoo! I remember when I first started, I would sit at the knitting group and just stare at the other knitters in awe. I asked them how they got so fast. The answer was always the same: practice, repetition, "I got faster and better at knitting by—fancy this!—knitting!" So, now I see what they meant by that.

Knowing my luck, I'll run out of yarn anyway, even doing the medium size. hehe.

Boring blog. So, bite me.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Vegetables are good for you and so is knitting

I ate Futo Maki for lunch and now I want to dance. I had miso soup and salad with ginger dressing, too. It's the best lunch ever. I'm kind of hungry again, though. I got the four piece instead of the eight piece—bad move. They should make a six piece for me, because that would be just right. I can't finish the eight.

I wanna jump around, but I am stuck here.

Only. 30. more. minutes.

grrrrrowl.

I'm making this and I have seven inches done. I have eight more inches before I get to do anyting other than knit 2 purl 2 rib. snoooooooooozzzzze. The yarn has some mohair in it. I don't think I like mohair. It's awfully fuzzy. At least it's not totally mohair. meh. It's soft, though, the yarn I'm using. It's Andean Silk. What's weak about this whole thing is that I have six skeins of it: 576 yards. The pattern calls for 588 yards. I did get gauge (ghost, that means that I am knitting the correct number of stitches per row and per inch to match the sizing in the pattern), so I figure I'm going to run a bit short. As you can see in the pattern, 6 skeins are required for both the medium and the large sizes. I am knitting the large, so, my guess is that I'm pretty much going to use all of that 6th skein.

So, here's the tricky part: what the fuck do I do to remedy this situation? I have some options.

  1. Just keep knitting and see how far I get in the pattern before I run out of yarn. Clapotis said it needed 3 hanks of Lorna's Laces, but everyone under the sun who knit it said they needed part of a 4th. I didn't even finish my 3rd. Then again, I didn't check gauge on that, because it's just a scarf and I don't care about gauge on it. A con to this option is that if I run out of this color yarn RIGHT before I finish, I am kind of screwed and will have to rip back and figure a new plan of action. Purchasing more yarn in this color is out of the question, because it's from knitpicks and I know for a fact that they don't have any more in the dye lot; last I checked they were out of the color temporarily and receiving more on March 26, so, yeah, I don't imagine it could possibly be the same dye lot. meh.
  2. Choose another color and add some stripes. If I do this, I can be sure I won't run out of yarn. The question, then, is this: what color? The top is cute, but with stripes or a stripe, it's probably going to end up looking like some crappy old navy shirt or something—you know what I mean. Those shirts with a stripe that are in all those stores. *sigh*
  3. Choose another color and make the top half of the shirt a different color than the bottom half. Again, what color? If I pick a contrasting color, like Yarrow, it'll look like an easter egg. I think my only option is black. The grey color they have (slate) looks weird with this purpley-blue which, by the way, is NOT cornflower blue. I know cornflower blue and this ain't it. This is periwinkle or something. I should've bought the Pool color. Oh well.
  4. Other options?

Got any bright ideas? What sucks is that adding another color of yarn is pretty much going to destroy the whole bow thing.

OK, I'll stop babbling about yarn for now. I've killed a good twenty minutes.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

I saw a crotch

I thought it would be fun to click that little "Next blog" button at the top of the page, and it was, for a while; then, I saw some nudie shots on someone's page. D'oh! I'm such an idiot.

Mental note: No clicking "Next blog" while at work.

Bad Music

I think I like a Britney Spears song. Weird. Maybe I just think it was well-produced. *shrug* I don't know. It's called "Toxic." I'm kind of ashamed to admit this, but I think it's the right thing to do. I can't live this lie any more. I heard it a couple of weeks ago when I was eating lunch in this restaurant downtown and I was all "hey, this sounds pretty cool."

Let the mocking commence.

So, I'm still trying to decide if indexing IJ is a good idea or not. Now that I am aware that an idex does exist, the idea has kind of lost its appeal. Still going to reread, though.

Here's the existing index. I think the format is terrible (each entry in a block like that), but it's pretty thorough.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Infinite Index

So, I started, and it's harder than I thought it was going to be. Indexing is difficult to begin with, but indexing a work of fiction--and this work of fiction particularly--is rather an interpretive undertaking. I am forced to decide what is important, what I will want to find later. It's rough.

There are things that I am indexing that perhaps seem like irrelevant minutia, but they are not.

It's going to take more than one read to index. I've gotten to page 43 on this first read and have marked some things. I need to read these pages again to get a better idea of what comes up again and again and deserves index space.

I'm having trouble deciding how to index people--or if I even should index people, as a general rule. There's this part of me that wants to be able to look in the index under "Himself" and be directed to any entry that includes him as a character or is about him. That could get messy, but it would be rewarding.

The trouble is that there are so many people in this book. Shall I index every one of them? Shall I stick to Hal's immediate family only? I think it's overkill to index every time Mario and Hal have a conversation, but, what if I want to find all of them later? I should just do it, I guess. They do have a quite a few good conversations.

I think I will be indexing certain themes, too. Like domestic violence. Wouldn't it be nice to just find all the terrible domestic violence stories by looking under one heading? Yeah.

And words. I am 40 pages into the book and I have already read etymological discussions of 5 or 6 different words. That's the type of thing that I am lucky to have begun marking this early--I know I will find other entries like that, later on in the book, and be pissed that I didn't start marking them earlier. That's why I am saying it'll take more than one read. When I finish this read, I should have a somewhat thorough index, but it will take reading again to really flesh it out. What if, on page 799, I realize I need to have been marking a certain type of entry? I will have missed all the entries on pages 3-798 (starts on 3).

This is gonna be wicked-awesome.

Any tip, hint, advice, or criticism is welcomed and appreciated by me, the mad indexer.