dr. horrible & other stuff

skipping over the fact i have not blogged in months, let's get right down to it. i was on amazon looking for a birthday present for the boy and noticed dr. horrbile's singalong blog was available on DVD for  $10. of course i bought it. we watch it last night and giggled all the way through. then i checked the special features. there's a musical commentary. i'm not kidding. it's hilarious. the entire casts sings the commentary. there's a song about the writer's strike last year, why nate is better than neil, another about why asians are never cast in the lead, and a song by groupie #3. of course the lines are witty and laugh out loud funny. groupie #3 gets her solo because she gave joss $10. nathan fillion takes over her solo with a "suck it. i gave him $15." one of the last lines is something like "we've reached the end, you've listen to all our words, and that makes you a great big fucking nerd." yup, for joss, absolutely. loves it.

i've cast on another clapotis. i have small problem, i know. i tried to knit something else but it was just not working. instead, a fire engine red clapotis using collinette jitterbug (sock yarn). if i get organized, i might even take pictures and put it on ravelry. it makes me happy. and is there such a thing as too many clapotis?

i turned 34 this past week.  the boy bought me a great present. a couple years ago, i picked up the "keep calm and carry on" poster. some genius spoofed it and there are limited edition prints available on threadless that read "now panic and freak out" hee hee. my mom gave me david rocco's cookbook. yum.

we're off to a delish dinner at bhima's tonight and are going snowboarding on monday to celebrate the boy's birthday.

my baby boy is 2.5 today. he started in the preschool room at day care. he's a non-stop dynamo. he knows his numbers from 1-9 and is working on letters. he's fully into the "i want to do it!" stage. he usually says please and thank you. he has discovered thomas the tank engine and dinky cars.

we are in the preliminary stages of a basement renovation. i cannot wait to have the extra room. it'll be a place to chuck all of the kidlet's toys and hopefully a place where we can entertain as well. we're putting a bathroom in down there with a shower. the eventual plan is to replace the bathroom upstairs (original 1947 features!) but first we need the basement bathroom.

and i made one resolution for 2009: i want to be a milf.

by the skin of my teeth

now that it is officially spring (not that you'd know it what with the snow and all), i've been feeling guilty about that not quite finished clapotis. it would looks smashing with my new spring coat (i took ms. hedda's advice i bought a smart new coat) and new fluevog boots.

to recap on the clapotis situation, i finished it but i wasn't happy with it. i was paranoid of running out of yarn so i cheated by doing a bunch of k2togs in the repeats to reduce the number of rows i had to knit. so about 12 rows from the end, my clapotis suddenly got skinnier. no one would ever see it but i would know it was there.

i pulled it out saturday, threaded yet another lifeline in (that's 4 for those who are counting), and ripped back confident that i had enough yarn to finish it properly.

let's just pause for a moment to laugh at my naivety.

so even thought it was becoming clear that i actually did not have enough yarn to finish, i kept knitting. the rows were getting shorter and shorter, with fewer and fewer stitches, surely i could eke it out (did i just split an infinitive there? is it "eke out"?).

alas, it was not so. stubborn, i dug around in my knitting notions bag (where the scissors, tapestry needle and stitch markers live) and pulled out the end i had snipped off when i joined my second ball. (this is exactly why i fear throwing out things that i might need later) really determined now, i admit to one k2tog and really tight stitches and this is what i have.

i'm leaving the ends like that until i can show it off to the guild tomorrow night (amy singer! is coming! to talk to us!) and the tuesday night knitters. then i'm going to sew them in with thread because there aint no way i'll be able to weave those suckers in.

the other mildly amusing aspect of the scarf, one which i hope goes away with enough wear and scrunching, is the obvious point where i started to worry that i would run out of yarn. three quarters of the claptois has nice drape, loose, even stitches. the last quarter is *tight*. meh.

fin

i just finished weaving in the ends. all but one. i don't want to block it because i love the way it curls in on itself and creates the waves that it was named for. the "ladder" stitches are still kinda kinked though. i'll hang it over a chair and see if its own weight will stretch things out.


i did have enough yarn but i was panicked at the end and so cheated a bit. i k2tog in almost every repeat about 12 rows from the end, effectively reducing the number of rows i still had to knit. no one would ever know unless they were specifically looking for it but i'm not 100% that i'm satisfied. especially now that i know exactly how much yarn i have left. i could rip back and reknit that last bit. i probably will. i didn't weave in that end because i was still waffling. (watch, i'll be just short of yarn when i do re-knit it)


i'm waffling in general. i liked the yarn better as a skein than knit up. i was hoping for a lighter green. i don't really have a coat that goes with it. but it cost so much money! i could give it to someone deserving like my mom but i dunno. i'll live with it for a bit and see. after i fix it.

eep

the dreaded clap, or, this could end in tears

i've had a few UFOs sitting around for a while. i decided that i would finish a few things before i started anything new. last spring i happily cast on my second clapotis using hand maiden's silk maiden yarn in lily pond (50-50 silk and wool). being heavily pregnant at the time, i was unable to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes. i shoved the clapotis in a plastic bag at the bottom of my knitting basket.

i picked it up again in early january. i love the pattern (kate is a genius) and as much as i love knitting it, i've been trying to speed through it so i could move onto something new. knitting while watching season 4 of 24 on dvd is perfect. watching jack bauer rush around makes me knit furiously.

i kept glancing at my yarn to guage when it was time to start decreasing. Stephanie has written about the knitting void where it seems like you aren't making any progress no matter how much you knit and then suddenly you are two inches past where you need to be. I felt like i wasn't making a dent in the ball and then suddenly realized that there was no way i could do the 80ish rows of decrease before running out.

of course putting in a lifeline never occurred to me. why would it? that ball was lasting forever. ha! so i pulled out the tapestry needle and some contrasting yarn and carefully threaded a lifeline just above my last dropped stitch. that should be enough, right? ha! i frogged, i picked up the stitches, i started decreasing.

two days ago i finally admitted to myself that there was still no way i had enough yarn to decrease properly. and there it sits on the coffee table while images of hourglass sweaters dance in my head. there's nothing for it. i have to frog it down at least one, maybe two, repeats. eep. of course, i love the dropped stitch action so i pull my ladders all the way down.

can i pick up the dropped stitch a couple rows before the doomed repeat(s)? or do i have to one-by-one fish up the stitches. i think i'd rather frog the whole thing and start over; the clapotis is just about as long as i am. i am going to try frogging two repeats, picking up the dropped stitches a couple rows below the repeat and see what happens.

i realize that the preceding paragraphs do not make any sense if you haven't knit a clapotis. sorry about that. i'm really just typing out loud.

two blogger notes: why does blogger not have a spell check? and why can't i put images just anywhere in my post? why do they show up at the top of the post? i know enough html to insert an image tag and yet...hmmm.