1. This post may contain a little TMI than some folks are used to, but I am one such person to never skim on details.

2. This post may also provide too much insight on my personal neuroticism.

As I’m sure you’ll all agree, moving is a pain. Luckily, my sister flew in from Toronto for moral support, and I had movers to come in and pack up all my things for me. Now I don’t know how you store your delicates, but being a child of the IKEA age, I have two of their Antonius shelves to house mine.

Ikea Antonius Shelving

Now here’s how I process. I figured, since all the items are already in their respective drawers, it’ll probably be more time-efficient to just wrap tape around and around to secure them. In fact, that is exactly what I’d do as a mover if I were to pack. Secure items. Check. Lift shelves to truck. Check. Unload from truck. Check. Et Voila!

I was so so wrong. I stepped outside my apartment to soak up the last few days of California sunshine while 3 burly men came in and took apart the dining table, coffee table, book shelves, bed frames. In the mean time, these men got to work packing everything else. About 30 minutes later, the apartment gave birth to 40 boxes that just kept coming. Thinking that I should probably step in to check on their progress, I sauntered in. All the items in my Antonius shelves – the ones that store my delicates – had been emptied.

Let’s think here for a second, my friends. One out of three of those burly men was in my underwear drawer emptying out the contents into a brown cardboard box. He might or might not have seen what I own. I was hoping for might not, but who are we kidding here? He. touched. my. undies. And let’s not even get into how we categorize them – Grade A for the super special occasions, Grade B for the everyday wear, Grade C for the…. well, you get the idea.

Mortification ensued. When it came time to initialize the form and acknowledge that everything had been packed and ready to ship, looking straight into the mover’s eyes was a challenge. I looked everywhere else but. His hairline, his nose, the tree 10 feet behind him, and oh, yes – the form.

Good thing I have a sister to laugh it all off – over beers to drink it all away. So, the lesson here is, when movers come to pack your stuff…they pack e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.

“Make sure you do all your winter shopping. You’ll need warm gear for Boise.”, said the lady.

“How cold does it get over there?”, I asked.

“In the winter, it’s about 20 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Having lived in Southern California for the last 10 years, my immediate response before I could filter my thoughts was:

“Holy cow. How do you people live?”

The day that my flight landed, it snowed. This was the first week in November. It was a bad omen. The next couple of weeks, it was full on winter – with temperature never breaking 20. I thought to myself: “They lied to me.”

It was then that I realized that I was going to need a much warmer sweater than all the sweaters in my arsenal. Knitting was no longer a hobby – it had become a necessity. I got crankin’.

This is my Turkey Waddle Sweater. I completed it on my Thanksgiving trip out to Detroit to see my best friend and his family, and was able to snap a few pictures by his parents’ lake house. If you look carefully, I am wearing 3 layers of clothing in this picture. Photo-snapping session lasted about 5 minutes before I dashed into the house for my down jacket. This ex-Californian is thin blooded. We don’t do cold – no we don’t.

Materials: Less than 7 balls of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky, in Lobster (I think), Sz 10.5 needles for body and Sz 10 needles for the ribbing and sleeves.

Notes:  Sweater was knit bottom up, with 3-needle shoulder bind off, and then the sleeves were knit top-down ala Barbara Walker style. There was no waist-shaping, and the only mod that I made was to start the ribbing from the elbow down.

Braced with the warmest sweater I’ve ever had, I thought I was ready to go back to Boise and conquer the cold. I spent an entire weekend inside the confines of my new apartment and watched the snow outside. By spying on my neighbors, I even figured out how to use that weird looking contraption that they call a windshield ice scraper. Totally saved me an embarrassing experience of asking strangers how to use the damn thing.

Monday morning. Four layers of clothing. Two layers of socks. Arm warmer. Cashmere fingerless gloves underneath a pair of fur lined leather gloves. Stepped outside the door, and checked the temperature on my iPhone and it said “4 deg Fahrenheit”. Stepped back inside the apartment.

“Please route all my work calls to my cellphone. I’m working from home today. I ain’t driving in 4 degree weather.”

They lied. They told me it was 20 degrees.

It didn’t help that every Friday afternoon, one of my office mates would come in and tell me that it would be snowing in the weekend, and that it’d be really fun to go up to the mountains. He conveyed his weekly weather reports with such fervor and gusto – even after I had mentioned that nature and I don’t really get along.

To this day I still can’t figure out whether or not he was trying to interest me in outdoor snow activities or scare the shit out of me.

I'll miss you, Sunny Cali. Don't you forget me.

The largest change for me in the year 2009 was that I have been uprooted from So. Cal. For the last 6 months, I have been residing in Boise, ID. Culture shock? You betcha. This is where I’ll be for the next few years, and regardless of how I feel about the place, I’ve grudgingly settled in. (No, Winnie, tell us how you really feel).

I debated for a few months whether or not to just shut down the site since I’m not as proliferate a knitter as I once was, and but found out that I really lack the cojones to just click on that “delete my account” button. For better or worse, I’ve decided to blog again. This time around, however, it’ll probably be more than just a knitting blog. I figured that my life has changed, and why not document it? I’ll whine, I’ll rant, and maybe also sneak in a few knitting pictures. Perhaps when I look back in a couple of years, this will all be funny.  Believe you me, I’ve got stories.

Welcome back, readers.

This little gem was completed in November, made up from a skein of red cashmere that was gifted to me by Joy before she moved to Hawaii, and 3 skeins of leftover Rowanspun 4-ply in the colorway Squirrel. The top-down yoke sweater is inspired by MissLemon’s stripey version, and all it took was just a simple gauge swatch, some head measurements to make sure the sweater will fit through my noggin’, and try-as-I-knit top-down fun.

The edgings for the roll neck, sleeve and the bottom bands were finished off with an applied icord, a la Purl Bee’s tutorial. I played around with jogless stripes and centered the beginning of each round at the center on the back of the sweater (traveling down the spine). It’s not completely inconspicuous, but it’ll do for now.

The result is a feathery-light garment that I’ve dubbed : Candy Cane. If you’d like to knit one for yourself, please drop me a comment and I’ll go dig up my pattern notes. Of course, it’ll only be in the size that I knit, which is 36″ around for 2″ positive ease. (editted to add additional pictures)

Pattern: Garter Sideways Hat from Drops, Sz 58 cm

Materials: Noro Sock Yarn (Colorway S164), 0.5 skein, Sz 3 needles

There isn’t a thing that I don’t love about this hat. The garter stitch, the slouch, the colorway, and the simplicity of the pattern. You should all knit yourselves some. Trust.

Happy Holidays.

Nevertheless, yarn had been bought, and I was not about to let it go to waste. I ended up ripping out most of the sweater and modified it to suit my measurements. Realistically, this tank only took me a week to knit.

The tank wasn’t fully complete without its accent ribbons. And since I didn’t have the Rowan Linen Print called for in the pattern, it took a while before I settled on Berroco Suede and finally called it a FO.

Pattern: Toledo, Rowan 37, Sz L hips modified to Sz XS for the rest of the bodice

Materials: Sz 6 and 8 needles, 5.5 balls of Rowan All Seasons Cottons (Shade 192) and 0.5 balls of Berroco Suede (Shade 3764)

Notes: All Seasons Cotton is a lovely yarn. Quite unlike the ropey feel that I have come to expect of cottons, it is springy, smooth and quite spongy. A delight to wear and also to knit with, very much to my surprise. I used 12 strands of the Suede yarn per plait, in lieu of the Linen Print. I think this blue/gray combo turned out quite nicely. In all honesty, I have always liked this pattern and wondered why I never see more of them on the web. In hindsight, I think it would fare better for a DK-weight yarn instead of an aran weight cotton, to minimize potential chunkiness. But all in all, a great pattern.

Now that this one’s out of the way, I better get cracking on that Ilga Leja Pattern.

Fast foward to the Fiber Festival in Torrance last Sunday, and all of a sudden, I was swayed once again. This time around, I picked up a new spindle from the Custom Handweaving booth, and was determined to give spinning another go.

Enter Exhibit A – the bird’s nest.

Within 30 minutes of its arrival since Friday, I was spinning thin strands of yarn. Hello? Thin, improved-uniformity strands of yarn. Then I realized in that very moment that I, self-proclaimed enemy of spindling, has “gotten it”. 2 days later, my little Golding is full. My friends, it’s all in the spindle. Quality tools make for quality spinning. I believe that firmly, and it is with this belief that I will justify all future purchases of additional Golding spindles. And to prove that I really really got it, I went back to the other spindle and tried it with a different fiber.

Enter Exhibit C – mystery spindle from Custom Handweaving, much much heavier spindle.

By golly, spindling is FUN! Unforunately, I did find that the 2 fibers that I have at home (both corriedale — cheaply bought from etsy) are somewhat felted in various spots, making the drafting and spinning process somewhat less pleasurable than it could be. My ultimate goal is to advance to spinning enough merino for a pair of socks. Of course, this means that I will need to learn how to ply… but we’ll talk about that much later because I haven’t the slightest clue what the difference is between Navajo plying and just normal 2-ply.

And lest you think that I have gone over to the dark side and abandoned knitting, you are sorely mistaken. But we’ll save that for another day, because it’s so very close to being a FO.

I spent yesterday in San Diego hanging out with a friend that I haven’t seen in a year. During the much anticipated catch-up story-telling session of everything that has transpired in our lives, I realized that alot of the punchlines and “oh-no-you-didn’t” moments have escaped my short-term memory. This is definitely no bueno  in my book, because you see, I need instant refreshers to all things funny and tragic that have occurred in my life.  

And so, encouraged by my Life in a cubicle commenters, I’ve decided to incorporate more of the funnies that have happened to me. My friend Bobby calls it the “Human Interest” section of the blog.

Date: August 7 2008

Location: Cubicle

Anonymous Person within my hearing range had been groaning in pain all morning. The story was that he fell off a horse and injured himself. But as all things go in life, there was more to the tale.

*crack*

Truth is, he cracked his rib on the shitter.

Moments later, the same person suffered a bout of non-stop sneeze-fest. In the midst of his sneezing, all I heard was:

Merde! Merde! Merde!

That must have been some merde indeed.

My sister called me up in mid-September and said that the weather conditions in Toronto already required winter coats. And then she requested for a scarf.

“Sure, of course. Let me email you some patterns so you can pick which designs you like. What color are you thinking of?” (imagination goes wild with heavily cabled patterns in reds, pinks, and other jewel tones)

“Oh, black, brown, or dark gray.”

“Seriously? But if your clothes are already in that color scheme, don’t you want your scarf to have some color to punch up your outfit?” (I mean, seriously, knitting with black yarn ain’t fun)

“Yea… but if the scarf is black then it’ll go with everything I own..”

“Well, I’ve got really really dark purple. Like, grape. It’s almost black. How about cream white? Can we settle for cream white?” (hello? color? hello?)

And then, before she told me which scarf designs she liked, I went ahead and knit her the Circles Scarf from “Knitting New Scarves”.

Then I sent her the link to Lynn Barr’s “Knitting New Scarves” and she liked it.

“I really like the Gathered Scarf too” (and also the Boteh scarf, but I don’t crochet, so that automatically disqualifies)

“Oh really? Then you’ll get that one as well. Color choice?” (thinking now that I’ve shown her that cream and gray looks well together as a neutral color combo, she may want to be adventurous with her second color choice)

“Black.”

Well, I guess in the end, she wants what she wants.

3:08pm

There is a repair man working on our air vent on the ceiling. This entails removing a ceiling panel, climbing up the ladder, and repairing… whatever that needs repairing. All I can see is a pair of navy blue work pants and his derriere. His upper body is in the ceiling, and all this is happening in the cubicle adjacent to mine.

So picture this:

He’s on a ladder, drilling stuff. *Bzzz…bzzz…bzzz*

I’m in the other cubicle, with one earbud from my ipod in the ear.

All of a sudden, he farted.

There was a 3 second awkward pause in the drilling.

No one moves. His torso is still in the ceiling.

I proceed to put the other earbud in my ear.

When he emerges from the ceiling, he will see that I am listening to music and therefore, my pretense of not hearing him fart is believable.

Back

This week is the first week that I’ve picked up my knitting needles and finished one of my lingering UFOs. 

Front

Pattern: Cherry Cardigan, 32-34″ by Anna Bell

Materials: Elizabeth Lavold Hempathy, 4.5 balls, Sz 3 and 6 needles

Buttons

Notes: Hempathy is soft and not very splitty, and I love the fact that it is machine-washable. I had initially started this cardigan way back when in May 2008, but didn’t get to finish it until this week. The only adjustment that I made was to cast on in Sz 34 for the hips, but gradually decreased to Sz 32 for the waist and followed directions for the rest of Sz 32. It is a wonderfully written pattern, and I can see this being a go-to cardigan for the summer (or what’s left of it).

Sleeve

Would love to stay and write some more.. but I have to ski-daddle now to the Radiohead Concert. Parking spots are supposedly hard to find!