I have a long weekend ahead of me with many things to do and prepping for an interview cycle. My contract is up at the end of August and Mama has to find another. Luckily she has an interview for a post she really wants on Tuesday. Theoretically since I am on the inside it should be easier. But theory doesn’t always work in life and me… I only need inhale to start making up paranoid scenarios. Here Chez Tink, until things are resolved and in writing or my passport, we think you are full of it, have visualised 12 worst-case scenarios and believe NOTHING.
Anyways, I leave that psychosis in the rainforest I brought home to prep for that interview, now residing on the table already covered in papers I need to go through. Friday is my relax and plan evening. So after I made it through the day, after I made it home and ate dinner, I sat myself in front of the fan and I said WHEEE I have Rebecca Magazines!!!
All is good… well kind of.
The observant among you will notice my initial reaction to Friday knit night, was to put Mon Amour (Shedir) aside. This is the result of my piques of panic that are occurring more and more often. I have *this* much yarn left and I have 428 stitches to knit. I am feeling queasy that there will not be enough to finish. I have already done a lot of cabling, and I am not a happy cable ripper. It is a discontinued colour and this is all I have… thus running out is not a good thing. The only option I will have is to rip the whole bugger back and try to recuperate 128 stitches by reducing the pattern dictated 9 rows of ribbing to make it 8. After that, don’t ask because my thought pattern refuses to go further. Chez Tink, we don’t face up to these kind of things on a Friday night.
So I immediately throw myself into the Rebecca magazines. I look at the Summer one and I see three patterns I am thinking of making, imperative word is thinking- but we’ll get back to that. At this point after looking at pictures and making glances but not readings of patterns, I decide since I have that pretty raspberry yarn Polly convinced me I must purchase (What? it needed a nice home and my flat doesn’t have much yarn) would make a lovely wrappy top that everyone has been making. I tried on Jackie’s when she was here and I know that it is lovely so I zone in.
I find that pattern and I realise my gauge, as I like this yarn knit (remember people, I like "bitsy" needles and high numbers) it is TIGHT. Like twice as tight as the suggested gauge. Oh the glory of having to approach the maths. Internets we know how much I like the maths. So much that after a few kirs in me I tell my cute but full of his economist self Polish coworker that him and his economic models are dry as buffalo shit ready to use for the fire and he can take his calculus elsewhere. I know it and I couldn’t give a flying fuck. (Yeah I make great impressions- then again he was kicking on Political Scientists. Which given that I am one, how often he has read one and his lack of ever taking a class is a bit more than judgementally hypocritical and fucks with his assumptions and models to boot… but I digress)
Back to the gauge… I don’t know if want that loose of a gauge in this yarn. But that is well and truly secondary. *GASP* the gauge… how can that be secondary?? Gauge is what ensures your pattern resulting in the model that you see. Don’t you know, every pattern tells you so.
I’ll tell you how (says the not-so-brown cow). Because oh good god... I don’t speak English (admittedly this comes as no surprise to my coworkers or anyone who has read my writing, but it does shake me a bit. I am delusional, and a lost case). I mean what the fuck is a welt… I always thought it was the point where your bruise becomes a big fluid bump on you… and I don’t want one of those on my knitting thankyouverymuch. Worse, I cannot read. Nope those letter combinations make utterly NO sense to me, what.so.ever.
People I am going to need to relocate to a gite on a vineyard to get me through all these “readings” so that I can attempt to make this top (god help me should I approach the lovely top Sharyln just finished- which ironically is the pattern that finally pushed me over the GET IT NOW edge from my permanent residence in Procrasstination Village). It takes me 4 reads and playing with numbers to understand that edge st. is a pattern-included selvedge… Note, I have never said I was quick on the uptake. Then I am left to make all sorts of guesses, like whether the gauge swatch should be in StSt. Cause they make no other reference. And this pattern has a flower on it cause it is for beginners...
Yo Rebecca- thanks for the confidence boost!
Things are looking so good I decide me and my newly opened wine bottle, we are going to read the introduction page. I mean this magazine is nice like that, it isn’t just an insert of the patterns in English the whole deal is in English. No articles but an intro page will do when you are drinking straight from the bottle due to a pattern. After reading for a few seconds I note that they make a comment that this issue is a typically Rebecca issue with precise instructions.
This is where you can insert me laughing HYSTERICALLY… dude you people leave so much to assumption that if I didn’t know better I would be sure the Pope told you himself to start knitting up the Baby Jesuses and set up a knitting booth at St. Pietro’s Piazza for Assumption next month. That or you are mooning the Pope (cause you know to assume makes an ass out of you and me; and ass who gets Assumption as a holiday, but ass nonetheless)
In the end I said fuck it, and decided I would blog about it. I figure I have learned (besides that being illiterate and linguistically challenged) that I REALLY REALLY like Rowan patterns and the way they are written. I can read them. They have their faults (Bueller?? Bueller?? Where are the schematics? Are they that painful to create?? I’ll help you), but I never feel illiterate. Two, I only know how to read certain kinds of patterns with ease. There are 101 ways to write them and I am not always successful in understanding them. And like Phildar, even though this magazine is in English. And three, I have a feeling that a learning curve is dead ahead of me. Bring on the vino!
Now I am off to plan the rest of this weekend that could kill me, that could be one great big flat on my ass failure (in terms of getting errands done), and that totally should kill me for next week. Thank god everyone will be leaving town soon.
Posted by Stinkerbell at July 16, 2005 01:41 PM | TrackBack