Fluff and Stuff

A baby has been born to my dear friends on the other side of the continent and since I can't go see this new wee one (who the internet assures me is most adorable), I must make things for it.

I get to make stuffed animals (!)

The more little plush things I make, the more I enjoy it. There's a lot of freedom in a stuffed animal pattern--certainly there are a certain number of pieces in a certain shape, but they need to be assembled. That's when you get to make choices. Will it look more like a cartoon or the real animal? How and where should the limbs be attached (Does it have shoulders and hips?). What size should the eyes be?

I usually make these decisions the same way--Is this animal food for something else? If it is, the eyes go further back and to the side. I've found that herbivores just don't look right with eyes facing directly forwards. Rabbits look like dogs, sheep start looking like lions. I think it's one of those subconscious things where your brain is making decisions you're not aware of, but I could be wrong. The other biggie for me is the ears. If the animal is going to look "realistic" (for a knitted, stuffed thing) the ears get crimped and placed farther back and lower on the head. Almost no animals have aural cavities above their brow. If the animal is cartoonish, the ears sit much higher. They exist exclusively to enhance the cuteness.

Arms and legs are usually decided  in that order. Once the fore-limbs are attached, the legs usually need to go somewhere specific to make a cohesive piece. By that point, everything else usually falls into place.

So, without further ado, a slightly realistic armadillo and a very cartoonish kangaroo. 

 The armadillo is "Don the Dillo," a pattern which I cannot recommend to anyone as a first stuffed animal. It's pretty error riddled, which is okay since it's free, but could prove very frustrating to someone with no idea what they're doing. I did some shaping on the face to turn up the nose, crimped those ears and placed them lower so that they peak out of his shell like a real 'dillo, and moved his eyes to the side of his head. The original construction for this guy makes him look like Piglet from Winny the Pooh, which is pretty ironic considering I basically gave the kangaroo Pooh Bear's face.

 

This little guy is "King Aroo" sans crown and belly stripes. I don't feel like looking it up, but I'm pretty sure this pudgy kangaroo can't be a king because only female marsupials have pouches, since their ugly jellybean babies need to live there and nurse until they have things like eyes. and bones. Marsupials are weird.

(Weird marsupial factoid from your resident embryology graduate student: Marsupials fertilize multiple eggs at a time, but only have one joey at a time. They actually hold the other fertilized eggs in stasis just in case joey #1 dies [marsupials are crappy parents when it comes to caring for very young joeys]. If they lose joey #1, they can have joey #2 without needing to mate again by simply pulling that egg "out of the freezer" as it were. Awesome.)

But back to knitting. Because the kangaroo has the body of an ostrich egg, realism really wasn't ever on the table. I still follow my rule for eye placement. While Kangaroos are strictly herbivores, there isn't really anything to eat them, so they aren't too concerned with predators (especially since they can crane kick them across the Outback), therefore eyes go front. Ears are high and legs are silly.

So, that's what I've been working on. I'm a bit more than halfway through my pooling stole and I had the most terrible realization--what if hank #2 has a different stitch:color repeat ratio than hank #1. I may have to get creative in the very near future. More creative than usual. Hoo boy.

Going for a swim

I'm such a sucker for new ideas. I'll make something I'm bound not to use or even really enjoy looking at if it's got some snazzy new technique I've never encountered before (case in point: the perpetual hoarfrost moebius). I love beautifully dyed yarn with lots of purdy colors, but I'm shy about purchasing it. There's a couple reasons for this: I don't really wear patterned anything, ever, so making something that is, by necessity, multicolored, is a bit daunting; also I never know how to appropriately show off the color changes in an aesthetically appealing way.

Then I encountered planned pooling. Let's break that down a little. Pooling occurs when variegated yarn ends up with a whole bunch of stitches in the same color over an area exceeding a row or two. It's literally a blotch of color caused by hitting the repeat length based on how the yarn was dyed just right, and it's usually undesirable. But... what if you did it on purpose? I mean, yarn is usually dyed in a hank and so each color is close to the same length over the total yardage.

The very concept gives me the giggles. The yarn is a Christmas present from the etsy shop Yarntopia treasures, which is filled with gloriously dyed bits of pretty. I decided to work a complete circle for every row, which meant 116-ish stitches (ish... you have to fudge sometimes to make sure things are lining up appropriately)

The pattern is Japanese feather and fan, a lovely little 10 stitch repeat that drags the fabric back and forth in zig-zags which will need to be blocked into those stubborn garter edges (the whole rest of the fabric is making a wave, and yet the garter edge is straight as a rail... sigh...). I don't know if I'll actually use the finished product, but I am madly in love with knitting this thing, as evidenced by my 2+ feet of shawl over the past few days. This thing is addictive. and mindless. and gorgeous. Hopefully I'll have enough yarn for 6 feet of pretty.

I didn't finish by Christmas, but I'll take 5 days late.

I finished Lyra 2.0 today. Well, actually I blocked her today (gendered pattern name = gendered finished object... it's a bad habit of mine) and spent 6 odd hours yesterday crocheting around that border.

Gosh, do I crochet like an idiot.
Every time I pick up one of my hooks I'm reminded just how bad I am at it... Maybe if I practiced, I'd get better, but I'm at the level where I suck at it enough to dislike it, which hampers the desire to practice. It's a vicious cycle, really.

I had to go out and buy more T-pins because I knew I had nowhere near enough to block the added corners. Turns out T-pins are priced by idiots--$3.50 for 35, or $4.99 for 40 pins. That's right. Those extra 5 pins are going to cost you $1.50. Needless to say, I purchased 70 T-pins, not 80. That's one of those little things that irks me for reasons which I can't fully articulate. It sits on my irksome shelf right alongside the medium peanut butter being significantly cheaper per ounce than any other size, regardless of brand, and when a name brand product costs less than store brand products. Why? How did this happen? I'm sure there's a mathematical reason for it... probably one relying on people being creatures of habit who don't read labels.

But enough of that. Pictures!

I think it'll fit this time. That's Lyra 1.0, and she
kisses the edges of my table ever so obnoxiously.

 It's a full 16 inches wider than Lyra 1.0. I'm really glad that I decided to make the square, but let me tell you, man oh man was that last ball nerve wracking. I decided to forgo row 180 due to my frayed nerves and premonitions, and was that ever a good decision. I'm pretty sure we were in single digit territory for remaining yards after that crochet border.

So there you have it. Herbert Niebling's Lyra. I have the heat cranked up in our house right now so that it will dry faster. (In the winter, I tend to keep the house at a warm 55 degrees, which is not conducive to anything drying. ever.) When my seester gets me pictures, I'll post pretty Christmas presents, but as I finished them far from my camera, I have no evidence of their completion. In the mean time, I'm thinking of playing with some planned pooling. Wish me luck.

Be nice to secretaries... or really just be nice

It is one of my life mantras that secretaries have all the power, so you should always be extra-super nice to them. Think about it--they control all the office supplies, most of the keys, and all of the memorandums including the tone with which they are sent. A happy secretary is your greatest ally. An angry secretary is a force to be reckoned with.

I've found that this rule also applies to government workers--you know, the sort of people that deal with idiots day in and day out. They don't have the power in the same way secretaries do, but if you are genuinely kind to them, they let you get away with murder. Want tot' get through the TSA with that liquid in your luggage? Ask them how there days is. Say thank you when they hand it back to you, unsearched. (Being young, pretty, and having 2 X chromosomes helps this, but it's not everything.)

Going to the DOL? Have all your paperwork ready and smile pleasantly all the time. Suddenly your bill will be several hundred dollars less than it should be, and the nice lady behind the desk will apologize that it's as high as it is. Fees are all relative to mood. Some of them are unavoidable, but if you piss the staff off, they'll find extra things to charge you for.

Seriously, though, being nice to people will get you everywhere.

I've finished my knitted Christmas presents, and pictures will be posted after the holiday has passed. I am on row 155/180 on Lyra (25 more rows, people. 25.) I'm trying to be diligent about working on it, but it's pretty heavy and rows are running about an hour each. I'm also dreading the end of ball #4, because I'm not entirely sure my math is going to hold up to the real world. And I can't find any stores in the area which carry Navy blue crochet cotton...

I also started a door sealer... thing. It's a tube, which will be stuffed and then shoved against the door to keep the outside just that--outside. It's basically a 3 foot scarf. I'm doing fibonacci stripes (1-1-2-3-5) to keep things interesting. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the evening.

*Fingers in my ears*

I should have been a spy.

Or a psychiatrist.
Or a spy psychiatrist (The 1st 3 letters of psychiatrist are an anagram for spy. Coincidence? Not anymore.)

I don't know how I manage it--if I just have a very trusting face, or if I'm a good listener, or if I'm just super nonthreatening, or what, but people bare there souls to me. Often. Deeply. For reasons which I do not clearly understand.

I don't mind being a confidant for my dear friends--not in the slightest. If they need a listening ear, I'm always willing to lend it.

But I can think of multiple instances in the past few years where perfect strangers have broken down and bawled to me. A woman on an airplane spent 2 hours explaining why she hated her career, how her boss was corrupt (as in take to court corrupt) and how she really just wanted to be a wedding florist. A man I hardly knew recounted his sexual encounters, clearly seeking advice of some sort. (that one was weird. Apparently you can have debilitating shame and still maintain bragging rights.)

And those are the strangers--I sort of understand that. It's like no strings attached therapy where you can vent to someone who can do nothing to make things worse. It's cathartic.

However, acquaintances have a tendency to do the exact same thing. People who are concerned with social appearances, people floating around my immediate circle,who have no way of knowing just how gossipy I am, do the same thing. I can, again, recall more than one occasion where people on both sides of an argument have independently pull me aside to talk things out. Awkward. I've had people pull me aside just so they could talk out major life tragedies (I didn't even know you had a sister... this is awkward...)

And now people who are in positions of authority over me are taking 3 hour chunks out of my day to tell me their woes. Often.

I just want to work. How do you tell people in charge of the next two years of your life that you really don't want to know anything else about their personal life... ever... please... for the love of everything good and holy in this world...

I should have been a spy.

Distractions and other forms of monetary advancement

My plans to knit Lyra have been thrown off the rails several times now in rather quick succession. First, I had a mad desire to do some colorwork. I haven't done any stranded knitting in quite some time, which is a crying shame since I do enjoy it ever so much. Since Lyra rows were taking forever, I put it down for a little while and knit Flora, which is not a particularly well written pattern, but if you can ferret out what you should actually be doing (aka ignore the directions... sigh...) you can get a pretty nice product.

I knit mine on size 4 needles with some spare Knitpicks yarn I had lying around. The whole thing only took a couple of hours, even with the crochet (which takes me far longer than it ought to), and I was ready to dive back into Lyra.

Until Portlandia offered $10 a coffee cozy for 20 coffee cozies. My entire knitting schedule was derailed in favor of stash diving.

20 cozy cozies. I ship them tomorrow.
Lyra's on row 126/180.

Excel is a good thing. Just saying.

I am currently 122 rows into the 180 row Lyra tablecloth, and I spent rows 77 through 113 crossing my fingers (figuratively, of course. It is quite difficult to knit with crossed fingers) and hoping that I would have enough yarn. You see, when I made the circular version, I didn't take the best notes... okay, I took almost no notes, but I did mark the row where the yarn ball changed.

I just didn't write down the size skein I was using. Aunt Lydia's white crochet cotton comes in skein sizes ranging from "I think I'll make a doily for my potpourri bowl to rest upon daintily," to "Maybe a lace cozy for the Hummer would be nice." So while I know that I used 3-ish skeins, the yardage is absolutely up in the air.

I have 5 balls of blue crochet cotton of the "potpourri bowl" variety. I am working on size 3 needles instead of the recommended 1's or the 2's I used last time (it became clear in the first 20 rows that the finished product would not cover my table if I continued on with the recommended needles).  I have no compass to guide me through this maelstrom of "How much yarn do I NEEEEEEEEED?"

No compass but my math, that is (and Excel. I refuse to do some of this stuff by hand.) I didn't know how far one ball went, and with 90/180 rows making up less than a quarter of the total stitches, ending ball 1 at row 77 was a bad sign. The solution? Counting. Count all the stitches in every row of chart. Add the total number together and multiply by 2 (those WS rows will get you every time), then by 8 (because it's an octagon... sort of...). I got a number, and a big number at that. Then I counted from the top down to row 113. 2.8 balls, high end estimate, from row 113 to row 180. I say high end because I counted EVERYTHING as the same. A double yarn over doesn't take nearly as much yarn as 2 knit stitches--it's got no bottom--but screw it, it's the same. I picked row 113 because that is where you must choose what shape you shall make. It is the point of no return.

Somewhere along the line, I told myself that ball #2 would last until row 116. In retrospect, I have no idea where that number came from (no, seriously. I think I might have done some really terrible cross multiplication...), but since 116 is greater than 113 I decided to soldier on.

Ball #2 lasted through row 118.
3 balls remaining, with calculations asking for 2.8.
Math, don't fail me now.

I'm currently working my way through row 122, but as I'm nearing 50% of the work competed with >2/3 of the rows already knit, it's slow going from here on out. I had to pull out my 2nd pair of 3's because the stitches were crammed so tightly onto the single needle that they wouldn't slide. If something goes wrong with the yardage, I'm royally screwed. I don't think I could put a post hoc lifeline in this baby if my life depended on it.

No pictures of progress because it looks like a deflated jellyfish.