Fail!

So the most interesting thing going on here is my vertigo, which isn't all that interesting. It's mostly just bad. I am irked at the vertigo situation. So apologies for not being especially coherent tonight.

So I set out to do a Shazza's Bucket hat, and it did not work. It's a great pattern, but there's no gauge indicated, and I clearly got it wrong. So it is now Shazza's lamp shade:



I'm going to run it through the washer and dryer to see if it shrinks a little, but I suspect that a lampshade is what it will stay.

I have been frustrated by most of my knitting recently. I don't know if that's a function of my knitting or if I just have higher expectations than I did when I was starting out. I'm going to move on to the stranded mittens that I'm test-knitting and try to get through my current irritating knitting slump.

Oh no!

So remember how a while back I bought yarn for my mom's socks from Peggy's Strands of Heaven, a cute little LYS way out in the western suburbs? It appears to have closed, albeit hopefully temporarily. I really hope it reopens, because I liked it a lot and would definitely go back there if I were ever out that way again.

I've got to say, though, that I'm skeptical that it was the economy that did in this LYS. The construction situation, which completely obscured the store and made it difficult to get there even if you could find it, must have been a factor. And more than that, it really seemed like a hobby store run by someone who was not what you'd call an ace business person. The store hours were really limited, and I don't think she did a great job with publicity. At least, the only reason I found out about them was that I absolutely stumbled onto them on KnitMap. I'd like to think that when the construction ends and the store re-opens, they'll be a little more business savvy.

Moritorium on Geek Knitting

I did another Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. I know that those of you in other cities are thinking "Isn't Can't Stop the Serenity over?", but ours was postponed, so it's not. Anyway, I'm not crazy about the hat. I got gauge exactly, so I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it fits weirdly. Here's a picture of the hat:



And here's a goofy picture of me in it:



The geek knitting has gotten a little out of control, so I am now switching to projects that have no Firefly tie-in. I've got my mom's socks on hold for a little while. I realized that I messed up the stitch pattern, and I'm taking a break while I get over my frustration with that. In the meantime, I am knitting this summer hat for a fellow Raveler who is going through chemo and has solicited hat donations. For the hat, I'm using some of the GGH Samoa that I purchased for my very first failed project, a baby blanket that I planned to knit to celebrate the birth of my now two-year-old nephew. I don't have any regrets about the now-abortive baby blanket: it was actually a really good way to practice beginning knitting. But I'm clearly never going to finish it, and the yarn is perfect for chemo caps. I'm also test knitting some stranded mittens for another Raveler, which I am very, very excited about. I think I'm going to cast them on when I finish the hat.

Netflix Report: Absolute Beginners

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A lot of people do very high-brow and admirable things while they knit, like listen to philosophy books on tape or actually converse with their friends and family members. Not me. I usually watch T.V. while I knit. Sometimes I watch DVDs from Netflix. Because I don't have much interesting to say right now about my knitting, I am going to start a new feature in which I discuss the movies and T.V. shows which I get from Netflix.

For starters, we have a bit of a dud. I don't know why I expected to like Absolute Beginners. The book is supposed to be good, and it (the book, not the movie) is the subject of a Jam song that I like. But the movie kind of sucked. It's a musical that celebrates the youth culture of multicultural London in the 1950s. The hero, a young aspiring photographer, is obsessed with jazz and the new concept of a "teenager" but has to fend off challenges to this awesomeness in the form of racists and people who want him to sell out. It's kind of like Grease with neo-Nazis and no interest in the female characters' points of view. Sadly, it just didn't do anything for me. In fact, I turned it off before it was over, which is not something I usually do. The characters weren't developed at all, and the movie tells you that London's youth culture was super alluring and exciting but doesn't do a very good job of showing you why that would be. And mostly it was kind of boring.

I still might get around to reading the book sometime.

Next up is Derek Jarman's Jubilee. I'm very curious about that one.

If anyone has any good movie or T.V. recommendations for me to get from Netflix, leave 'em in the comments. I am always looking for good new things to get from Netflix.

Warning: this bike will stab you to death and then die of a heroin overdose

In a further addition to the annals of inexplicable marketing, I give you Schwinn's Sid and Nancy bikes. They seem like perfectly lovely bicycles, but I'm not sure I would purchase a bike named after either Sid or Nancy. Do you really want a bike that pays homage to someone who famously had trouble staying upright on stage? And call me crazy, but I just wouldn't be that enthused about riding a vehicle named after someone who is mostly known for the manner of her violent death. It just seems like tempting fate a bit.

Futher Adventures in Geekery and Intarsia

You know how sometimes your knitting seems to have a mind of its own? Today my Browncoat Bag woke up and informed me that it was meant to be a Browncoat Laptop Sleeve. Far be it from me to deny an innocent piece of fabric the opportunity to pursue its destiny, so it now is a laptop sleeve.

It's kind of a mess. I'm not sure how much of that is my knitting and how much of it is the crappy yarn. At any rate, I will try intarsia again at some point, but I think I'm going to give it a rest for a while, so I can forget how annoying I found it. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment anyway. I have to finish my mom's socks in the next week, and then I'm test knitting a mitten pattern for a fellow Raveller. I also have to finish my big-person Jayne hat for Can't Stop the Serenity. So it's not like I'm going to be tempted to make a second pass at intarsia anytime soon.

Warning: This Yarn May Cause You to Fall Flat on Your Face

I give you: Vertigo Yarn, the slogan of which is:

Each stitch is an adventure that will send you into whirling waves of vertigo!

I guess that's a bit clever. Yarn is spun; vertigo makes you feel like you're spinning; har-dee-har-har-har. Except that I'm willing to believe that whoever named this yarn hasn't dealt with a lot of vertigo. Vertigo yarns has, however, inspired me to come up with some potential yarn lines of my own:

Migraine Yarn: Each stitch will give you a terrible headache and make you want to hide in a dark room!

Nausea Yarn: Each stitch will make you puke your guts out!

Twisted Ankle Yarn: Each stitch will make your ankle hurt a lot!

There's a lot of stuff named after my annoying medical symptom: vertigo lollipops, for instance, and vertigo comics. Here are some vertigo pants, and here is some lovely vertigo perfume. For $650, Bloomingdales will sell you a vertigo pitcher. There are also vertigo shoes for kids, which may very well cause the unsuspecting child to fall flat on his or her ass, as vertigo has been known to do. Wal-Mart sells a lovely line of Vertigo bedding for children and teens. And I've got to admit, I do not understand it. I just don't. I'm not claiming that vertigo is the worst thing in the world. It's not. But it is an unpleasant sensation, and it makes it difficult to do things like, say, walk or drive. You don't want to have whirling waves of vertigo if you can avoid it. What on earth do people find appealing about vertigo? It's just motion sickness, except that it's a hallucination, so you can't stop it by stopping the car or getting off the boat. Does anyone want to have unrelenting motion sickness for months at a time? How did this irritating symptom become a marketing slogan?