Gleeful

Oh Glee, how I love thee!

(Not sure why I look so starry-eyed.)

I finished her last Monday, blocked her on Tuesday and wore her to work on Wednesday. The Joseph Galler alpaca is divine to knit with -- and it was free, since I picked it up with a gift certificate. Hip hip hurrah for free sweaters!

This is probably slightly larger than it should be, but I figure I need to wear a tank underneath it so as not to be obscene. I also made the sleeves a few inches longer than suggested so I could wear it in the winter. And I used Zephyr's instructions for lazy hook-and-eye tacking -- I only sewed on the hooks and simply attached them to the knit stitches. Hip hip hurrah for half-assed knitting!

Here's a bonus pissed off shot.




So onward and upward. I pulled the prepster jacket out of storage and found, to my surprise, that I had actually finished seaming it. But it looked like heck, like I'd offered a child a lollipop to seam the shoulders. Bumpy and lumpy and no good at all. It just wasn't meant to be. So I ripped it and started the Emma jacket. I think it's high time that I mix my love affair with jackets and my love affair with yarn, don't you think?

Oh, and Katie tagged me for this one:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

The nearest books to me right now are on our little living room book shelf, where we put our most beloved tomes. (Like Jon's copy of Bill Clinton's biography and numerous Kennedy books, or my copy of Stitch n Bitch. ) So I picked the left most book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Sadly, page 123 in this version is the cover page for chapter 11. It says only, "Who Stole the Tarts?" Kinda fun, no?

Anyone who wants to be tagged, well, is.

Revivified!

I am not precisely sure why I disappeared for so long. I could blame all of the secret knitting or all of the boring stockinette stitch that isn't worth photographing. But I have vowed to revivify the blog, even if it means taking progress shots of garter stitch scarves.

Let's start with the small project that is sweeping the nation -- or sweeping my friends, at the very least. It's Yarnmonster Jess's drawsting bag tutorial. It is remarkably fast and fun and simple, and I think I'll have to stitch up a few more.




I used some lovely Amy Butler fabric that I picked up at Brooklyn General with a gift certificate from the long-suffering boyfriend. (If you have not been to Brooklyn General, I'm not quite sure what you are waiting for. Fabulous vintage fabric and wonderful, helpful employees.)

So I am not a very good seamstress. Actually, it's more the cutting that is problematic for me. My fabric always looks as though it's been chewed into uneven shapes. And do you see the drawstring? Yeah, it's from an old pair of running shorts. I'm ghetto that way.

Despite my better judgment, I'm posting a picture of Glee. Alpaca, why oh why do you look like lumpy oatmeal before you are blocked? And why does it look as though I photographed this from behind prison bars? She is currently blocking on my neewww blocking board, so with luck she'll be ready for a debut soon.



And I also need to make a painful confession. Remember the prepster jacket? I have finally faced the fact that I'm never, ever, ever going to seam it. Looks like crap. So I'm thinking of ripping it and turning it into Emma. Whaddya think? That's not a very good picture of her -- the shot in the catalog is more flattering. But this way, the Cascade 220 quattro would still get to be a blazer!

Total weirdo

So I've been reading a lot of these posts lately in which people complete the Weird Things meme. Only these people are not weird! Intriguing and eccentric and one-of-a-kind, yes. Quirky, sure. But not weird! I'm totally weird. Like extra body part weird. You'll have to read through the knitting content to see why.

These are my Squirrelly mittens. Well, mitten, I guess I should say.



My problem is that colorwork knitting makes me motion sick. (See, I told you I was weird!) It's something about reading the chart and carrying the yarn in both hands. I have to take a break every few minutes. Plus, these are going to come out super large and only be appropriate for someone with man hands. So the mittens and I are going to be on a break for a little while.

In the interim, I have resurrected Glee. Loyal readers will remember that things didn't go so well the last time around. But now I'm making it long-sleeved, using the Joseph Galler alpaca, and steering clear of all hot liquids. Or any liquids really.

Without any further ado, it's 6 Weird Things About Me:

1. I have three kidneys, but only one works. That's right. Three kidneys. Apparently, it's more common than you'd think. It's kind of a long and unpleasant story, but I was sick a lot as a child and underwent a lot of surgeries because my left ureter was implanted into my bladder improperly. (I know, too much info.) Along the way, we realized that I had an extra kidney, but it's basically vestigial. Just hanging out there, taking up space. So my left kidney is severely damaged because of the ureter situation and the third one never worked, so it's just the right one keeping us going here at Every Word's a Purl.

2. I hate pickles. Like in a phobic way. Not quite as bad as this lady, but bad. I cannot stand having them on plate because they contaminate everything. If they're on my sandwich, I'll have to tear away the bread that they touch (contaminate). They're just mushy yet crunchy and have warts. Blech!

3. I have an insane memory. I can recall countless stories from my childhood in excrutiating detail - like first and last names of classmates and what books we were reading and what I was wearing -- and I remember things from when I was as young as two. (My dad had a stroke then, so I feel this has something to do with it. But he's OK now, and I swear this list will get less morbid.)

4. I have an amazing internal clock and haven't worn a watch in years. To test this, Jonathan will sometimes ask me what time and, even if I haven't seen a clock in hours, I'm usually only off by a minute or two. And unless I have to get up at, like, 5 a.m., I always wake up about a minute or two before my alarm goes off. It's probably out of anxiety.

5. I'm super aggressive for my job, like sneak-into-hospitals-and-fight-with-officials aggressive, but I'm intimidated by waitstaff and salespeople in my personal life. My dinner would have to be crawling with larvae for me to send it back, and I'm often pressured into buying things I don't need. I track this back to when I was 11, and the owner of a hippie crystal shop wrongly accused me of shoplifting incense. Seriously, who shoplifts incense?

6. I sometimes mix up my left and right, and I have to look at an envelope to remember which side the stamp goes on. This is so humiliating that I'll just leave it at that.

The perils of working New Year's Day

I'd like to state for the record that I consumed only one glass of Champagne last night. I was completely sober when I watched fireworks from the roof of my wonderful friend Shannon's apartment in Prospect Heights. I was home by 12:38 a.m. and asleep not long after.

I was downright bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I rolled into the newsroom around 10 a.m. this morning, long before most folks rolled out of bed.

So explain to me why my boss took one look at me, grimaced and said, "Uh. How you doing this morning?" I was mortified!

I'm telling you, it's the undereye circles and my complete inability to apply make-up properly. Is there some kind of surgery I can have? Is there a "Make-up for Dummies" course that I can enroll in?

Enough bellyaching. We have the first finished object of 2007! (Ok, I finished it in 2006! But I think excitement is in order anyway.) This is the Bejeweled scarf by the fabulous Shobhana. Not surprisingly, Lolly pointed me in its direction, and I found it ever so jaunty, even more so because it supported a good cause. (Not sure why it conjured a devilish grin from me, though.)


This is the lovely cormo/mohair blend I picked up at Rhinebeck from Stonesthrow Farm. Thing is, the stitch pattern is so addictive and relaxing and meditative that I just kept knitting and knitting, so it became longer and longer. And it reminded me a little of a get-up that I saw a woman wearing on the street, so I knit an I-cord belt and, well, voila!



It's OK if it seems a little strange to you -- the long-suffering boyfriend described it as "interesting," which is the same adjective he uses for my lousy recipes (and my lousy voice) when he's trying not to hurt my feelings. I'm sure there will be far more appealing iterations at the informal knitalong.