Because, because, because

Also in the spirit of who reads this blog anyway, a little test post.  After all, I did start it up under a name that was a Doctor Who reference.  By the way, in real life I'm still working on a collection/book of poems titled "7th and Ocean."  My first book of poetry is called "Spring Cleaning," it's published by Xlibris, and I'd appreciate some customers to contribute to my early-retirement-from-medicine-'cause-it's-killing-me-by-inches-literally fund.  And for more interdimensional storytelling, my other blog is princess-rory.blogspot.com.  Enjoy, my 2 readers and 15 random computers/robots!

The Ballad of River and the Doctor

(for Steve with a thousand curses)

The path of love was never straight and narrow:

I've known it since I stopped you in my sights.

Long gone today, crashing into tomorrow,

You'll count the days, and I'll tally the nights.

I've waited till the heavens dimmed their lights,

I've flown to you unerring as an arrow.

With you I've tipped the scales and set to rights.

I've stolen what I only sought to borrow.

In victory, in pain, in joy, in sorrow,

In stalwart charges and in desperate flights,

I'm there, that twinge, that tingling in the marrow,

That urge to further reaches, greater heights.

And when you've saved the worlds and fought the fights,

I'm there to see you fall, the poisoned arrow

Sharpened in secret through the lonely nights

In this gray cell, without you dank and narrow.

You see, even my love is tinged with sorrow,

Regrets, betrayals, fates and reverse plights.

The butterfly may flap its wings tomorrow

And bring us back into each other's sights.

I see you dancing on the Northern Lights:

What's time to us but a poor good to borrow?

The worlds could end if you stayed in my sights:

I've missed you in my very air-tight marrow.

But call, my love: I'll come like a loosed arrow.

The path of love was never straight and narrow. 

Life, the Universe, and Everything (or Fish Fingers and Custard)

Today is one of my Doctor Who quote days.  Maybe it's 'cause it's a weekend and I'm having one of my usual Sunday afternoon existential crises and really who reads this blog anyway?  But what keeps running through my head is, "The universe is big.  It's vast and complicated and ridiculous, and sometimes, impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles.  900 years, never seen one yet, but this would do me."  Something like that anyway.  And to quote Rory (badly as well), "I could use a ridiculous miracle right about now."

Relax, I waxed philosophical over an attempt at rice pudding too.  Life is like making custard.  Get impatient and crank up the heat, and you end up with a scrambled-egg mess.  Take it too slow and the custard never thickens.  Timing is everything, and maybe if I get those darn custards figured out the rest of my life will fall into place too.

Which is not to say that I didn't end up with a halfway-passable rice pudding.  You know, eventually:

Oh, shut up and enjoy the custard picture and the stealthily snapped shots of Project Wibble hat.

 The pattern, by the way is cast on factor of 8 stitches, knit 4x4 rib until you can't stand it any more, pick up bottom stitches and knit together with live stitches to make doubled cuff, knit 1 row even, change color, knit 2nd color until satisfied, switch back to main color, decrease every however many stitches you feel like to round out the top and then bind off.  Inspiration loosely based on fisherman's knit cap (remember those yellow Gorton's frozen seafood packages?  I...might 'cause one night I had an odd craving for fish fingers and custard).

PW2: pictures might be nice

By the way, these are the mittens in question:

And this is the hat in progress.  Pattern to come...?

PW: progress wreport

Just kidding, the PW stands for Project Wibble.  I've gotten too bored with it to write it all out.  But I am actually done with the mittens and starting the (excruciatingly tedious) hatband now.  The hat I have in mind sort of reminds me of a fisherman's cap.  We'll see how it actually turns out.  Incidentally, between my day job, writing, knitting, baking, and the upcoming growing season with my very own rosebushes to attend to, my forearms are going to either fall off or reach Popeye the sailor man proportions.

But I'm not here to talk about my forearms.  I'm here to see if can actually write out a pattern, albeit a somewhat tediously simple one.  Thing with me and patterns: they're more like guidelines, really, so if you're a newly minted knitter you might prepare for a little bit of confusion off the bat.  But that being said, here goes:

Project Wibble mittens with double-thickness rib cuff:

Cuffs:
Using double-points or circulars, cast on 36 stitches (any multiple of 4 will do when adjusting for size and gauge).  Join and mark beginning of round.
k2 p2, rpt to end of round to set up 2x2 rib
Continue 2x2 rib for about 30 rows or twice the desired cuff length.
Fold cuff in half so the cast-on edge is even with your live stitches.  Pick up stitch along cast-on edge so that it's in front of your first live stitch, then k those 2 sts together.  Repeat until you've got a double-thickness cuff and (hopefully) the same number of stitches (36, right?) you started with.

Body:
Mark beginning and middle of round.  For right glove you'll make your thumb gusset at the beginning of the round, and for the left you'll make it at the end.  Continue 36-stitch rounds in stockinette stitch until you're ready to start your thumbs.

Right glove:
round 1: m1, k1, m1, k to middle marker, sl marker, m1, k1, m1, k to end of round.
round 2 and all even rounds: knit to end of round.
round 3: m1, k3, m1, k to marker, sl marker, m1, k3, m1, k to end of round.
round 5: m1, k5, m1, k to end of round.
Continue thumb gusset increases until your m1-kx-m1 equals desired number of thumb stitches minus 3 (you'll pick up 3 stitches later to close your thumb.  Slip thumb stitches onto holder.
Knit remaining stitches in round until desired length (about 16 rows), then start decreasing.
K2tog at beginning and middle of round for 4 rounds (decrease by 2 sts per round).
K2tog, k2tog at beginning and middle of round for remaining rounds until 6 sts remain (decrease by 4 sts per round).
Place sts on 2 needles, 3 per needle.  Hold parallel, knit together 1 st from each needle, repeat with 2nd set of sts, sl previous stitch over that new stitch, repeat with last 2 sts.  Congratulations, you just bound off.
Pick up thumb stitches and 3 additional sts from mitten body edge.  Divide stitches evenly among 3 dpns or use markers.  Knit to desired length (about 12 rows?) and start decreasing.
K2tog at beginning of each needle or at each marker for 2-3 rows, then k2tog at beginning and end until 3 sts remain.
Break yarn, pull through remaining sts.

Left glove:
round 1: k to 1 before middle marker, m1, k1, m1, place marker, k to last st, m1, k1, m1.
round 2 and all even rounds: knit to end of round
round 3: k to 3 before marker, m1, k3, m1, pm, k to last 3 sts, m1, k3, m1.
round 5: k to last 5 sts, m1, k5, m1.
Continue thumb gusset increases until desired number of sts.  Slip thumb sts onto holder.
Knit remaining sts in round until desired length, then decrease and bind off as with right glove.
Knit thumb stitches as with right glove.

Like I said, more like guidelines.  Especially since I was so ADD with the second mitten I forgot what I did with the decreases and essentially reinvented the wheel on the spot.  It works best if you play around with decreases of your choosing (might even throw in some ssk if you're really anal about symmetry) until you get a nice round contour for the fingers.  Happy snoozing, and here's hoping you never have to budge until spring creeps over the windowsill.

Project Wibble

Hello again.  Christmas over and new project flying not-so-stealth on the needles.  I dub it Project Wibble, because how else do you pronounce WIBL?  Observe: hat and mittens for Grandpa in China-->"Warm face, warm hands, warm feet" (sort of)-->"Wouldn't it be loverly"-->WIBL.  Yeah, my brain works in mysterious ways.  Sometimes even G-rated.  It's actually kind of boring (Project Wibble, I mean, not my brain), and I'm suffering from second sock syndrome like you wouldn't believe.  Does anybody besides my mother care precisely how many rows of 2x2 ribbing I crank out for the (pick up and knit bottom stitches to form double-thickness) cuff or where I start the thumb gusset or how long I make the stockinette section?  Maybe I should've started with the hat.  "Manly" beanie with ribbed edge?  OK, maybe not.  At least there's a deadline...which unfortunately means my lace projects (auction shawl, 30s-inspired tunic sweater) are relegated once again to the metaphorical back burner.  And again with the Tetris game that is my mental to-do list.  Really need to do a memory dump one day, reorganize my priorities, separate the wheat from the chaff and figure out what I actually want to do with that traveling shovel.  I think a STL Nano might have groaned at that one.

By the way, what in the world have I done with my "Procrastinate" cross-stitch?  Dalek on the loose?  Run for your lives.

"I'd be lost without my blogger!"

So...the good thing about being corporate (I mean, a private pediatrics practice is, in financial terms, a business) is the company-provided phone (for all those frantic parent calls on nights and weekends).  I got a new smartphone as a Christmas perk, and it's really quite nifty.  But that brings me to the bad thing about being corporate: I can't actually activate it.  Which means that for the next 14 hours or so, my smartphone functions as a camera and a computer, but not as an actual phone.  Which also means that I've been snapping pictures of my recent projects like there's no tomorrow.  The following comprises a (not exhaustive) list of finished projects that would very much like to proclaim the above statement, now that they're (finally) seeing the light of day.

This is the shocking pink dress challenge, completed for C+A's wedding (#3?) in August.







 I'm wearing the hat to commemorate my actual reception ensemble, which included said pink straw hat, extra-long pink "quartz" necklace, and large earrings.





There would have been pictures from the reception...if I hadn't been having too much fun at the Children's Museum...

Next, Laminaria shawl, pattern courtesy of knitty.com, which did not get done in time for CMC auction.  Oh well, nice Christmas present for Mummy then.  She likes blue, right?  Right?

And last, but not least, mushroom fingerless gloves.  Well, of course, my dad has to have a knitted present too, right?  These came from the superwash merino I would've made a pair of manly gloves from to sell to random stranger at Starbucks.  Instead, I'm picking on certain computer geek tendencies (you can type while wearing them!) and old-school video game tendencies (it...almost looks like a Mario mushroom?).  Pattern courtesy of...me.  Don't ask which end it came out of.

What next, you may (not) ask?  Recreating Claudette?  Lace shawl #???  More dress designs?  Stay tuned, and try not to get too impatient!  (Or something.)

ch-ch-ch-changes!

Oh dear, has it really been almost 3 months?  I can explain.  Actually, maybe not, but this is a recap of the past 3 months, crafting projects and otherwise.

September: 1st day at new job, first call night, first call weekend--lawsamercy, is that really what life in the real world is like?  And to top it all off, mortgage applications, etc., for buying a house.  I really hate being a grown-up.  Highlight of the month: coming up with lace shawl projects for the Carolina Master Chorale gala auction.  Trusty knitty.com provided 2 excellent candidates in the form of Laminaria and Omelette.  While looking for yarn for said shawls, I discovered Knit 'n Purl, the local awesome yarn store of awesomeness.  Yes, people do drive over from as far away as Florence (about 2 hours away).  No, that's not uncalled for.

October: More 10-hour workdays, more call.  Choir concert (whoo, Mendelssohn's "Elijah" makes Mozart's Requiem seem like a cake walk) on the 28th.  Started Laminaria on extra-long dpns and lost a dozen stitches off the back (taped) end halfway through the blossom chart (insert creative cursing here).  Started back over on circulars.  Closed on house and had to move stash and everything else the day after the concert.  Misplaced camera batteries in the process, but finished Laminaria...1 week after the auction (see below).  Also, costumey fun with the girls at the Longs office.  I recycled green ren-faire gown, obtained a tiara, and used leftover gown fabric to make ogre ears: "instant" Princess Fiona costume.  And the NMB Walmart is just a little ghetto sometimes: 1/2 slightly used roll of larger-gauge jewelry wire?  If you don't want to maintain a crafts section, please just be honest about it and don't put one up.  Anyhoo.

November: Substitute auction item: Claudette scarf and gloves, which I'd worn there simply because it's gotten a little chilly on the Carolina coastline.  Also got propositioned for a pair of men's fingerless gloves the same day I was persuaded to auction the clothes off my back (so to speak, and so to speak).  Incidentally, if you're the person I spoke to at the North Myrtle Beach Starbucks, I have yarn picked out, so get in touch if you still want those gloves.  I'm charging $15 because the yarn cost $8.50 and I have to work on it during overtime hours (i.e. over and above my 50-60 hour work week).  Also, 1-1/2 weeks without internet?  Wha?  HTC, if I had to put up with that back in St. Louis, I'd be demanding a refund on my installation fee.  Just sayin'.  But I have to say the highlight of the month so far has been geeking out about Victorian/Edwardian costumes with the proprietor of the As They Sew In France booth at the Dickens Christmas market.  New challenge: procure recommended pattern book and make dress to wear to next year's marketplace.  Challenge so accepted.  Now I just need to sneak in some quality time with the sewing machine....

Yeah, I, uh, haven't been idle.