I ask for 2 reasons… the first being that they are predicting a triple digit heatwave to plow into the Bay Area over the next few days. [ugh] I melt when it hits about 80 F. I did convince the husband to set up the a/c in our bedroom so it would be ready to go as the heat rolls in. It’s a sad little air conditioner, but it makes it so I can sleep at night when July comes around. Why is it sad? Because when last year’s July heatwave hit us with 115 F for 3 days, the little a/c struggled to keep it a chilly 90 F in our bedroom. Course, a 25 degree difference is big when it gets that hot.

The other reason I am curious as to the weather conditions in Hades is because I actually managed to have both the time and energy to tackle my fiber room yesterday. Several things were picked up and put in the trash, while other things made their way into a bag for Goodwill. The big thing of the day was talking the husband into braving Ikea… where I hadn’t known they were having some sort of sale. [ack] But, I knew exactly what I wanted/needed so we were able to avoid the display area altogether. I got a new bookcase, a couple of magazine “racks” (which will be put to other uses), and a cork board. And once again I was completely amazed by people’s inability to understand how elevators work… people, the green arrow pointing skyward means the elevator will be going up, not down, no matter how much you really want to get back to your car right this second with your cheap Swedish furniture.

From there, it was a short adventure to Office Depot across the street, where this archivist finally procured a filing cabinet. This is all important as most of the mess in the fiber room is piles of papers from my classes. Now, I can put them in some sort of order in pretty purple hanging folders rather than the floor.

At lunch today, I hit the place with the nice plastic tubs I use to hold my yarn. My stash has outgrown it’s original constraints. This new tub will allow for some rearranging and some actual inventory to take place. I may even take the time to photograph my yarn so I can put it up in Ravelry.

I happily knit away on my Flower Basket Shawl for the suggested number of repeats that the pattern told me my yardage would support (I had 500 yds of lace weight cashmere, and the pattern says, that for the scarf shawl size in lace weight, 425 yds is needed). I sat down to do the bind off last night, and off-handedly look at my ball of yarn. Wow, that’s a lot of yarn left over, I think, I was only expecting about 70 yds.

So, in the effort to be scientific about it, I pulled out the kitchen scale this morning. It weighs in at 22 grams. That is sort of a lot… well, how much did I start with? No idea, cause the ball band only lists yards. [sigh] Thankfully, the Just Our Yarn website lists yds/lb. Myne supposedly has 6400 yds/lb, which figures out to about 400 yds/oz, which means the 500 yd ball should have weighed 1.25 oz, which is 35 grams. And I still have 22 grams left in the ball. So, I have used less than half, when I should have used almost all. I’m pretty sure I counted my repeats correctly.

So, I weighed the shawl, trying to exclude the weight of the needles. It weighed in at 17 grams, which is close to the 13 grams my math (35-22=13) told me it should have weight. WTF? Maybe I did miss a repeat, although when I count them, I get 8. Course, when I try to stretch out the shawl a little it looks really freaking small. I sort of took gauge into consideration when I started (I had a finite amount of the yarn, and wanted to make sure me and the designer agreed so I wouldn’t run out of yarn). Maybe I’m getting a slightly lacier gauge, that would account for using a lot less yarn, right?

I think I’m going to have to rip back what I’ve done of the bind off and the edging. This make me sad because I wanted to start working on the first clue of Mystery Stole 3, which was released today*. And there’s always the worry that I’ll rip back, add a few more repeats, only to run out of yarn on the last row. [grr]

Haven’t really knitted anything in a few days. My sister’s sock is stalled just before the heel flap. I have 2 lace shawls to block and nowhere to block them just yet (although now that my back is doing a lot better, I’m hoping to tackle the fiber room over the 4th of July holiday). I think I’m just waiting for Mystery Stole 3 to get started on Friday (hopefully, my crochet hook will arrive soon so I can decide on which beads I’m using).

I’ve been on Ravelry for a few weeks now and am finding it a really nifty tool. I’ve gotten a few WIPs logged as well as a few completed items. If you’re using Raverly and want to friend me, my username is zardra (go figure).

I’m feeling rather lowkey the last week or so, and I don’t know why. But that doesn’t stop the excitement. The front passenger tire on the Camry picked up a screw. Unfortunately, the tires were rapidly approaching the end of their life, so a $20 patch job turned into a full set of new tires. *ouch* Oh well, knew it was coming soon, just not this soon. And it really wouldn’t have been too bad, but we just paid Q2 taxes and fall tuition. Whee.

The only other real excitement is my bank doing its damnedest to raise my blood pressue. So, now I need to set up new accounts somewhere else, so I can close my savings, checking, and 2 vehicle loan accounts and tell them to go screw themselves. (As a side note, if you’re in the South SF Bay Area, I do not recommend banking with Technology Credit Union (TechCU)… yeah… *grr*)

Don’t have tons to say. Personal knitting is progressing slowly — I started the edging chart of my Flower Basket Shawl last night and I’m almost done with the decreases on the calf of the second sock for my sister. All the other knitting I’ve been doing is for Dulaan, and I need to remember to get the box out in the next few days so it gets to AZ before 7/1. We won’t speak of the the green sweater, which seems rather stuck at needing a second sleeve. What’s sad is there’s no reason, other then just not knitting it, for the sweater to not have 2 sleeves. (Secretly, I know the reason is probably because I gained back the last of the 10 lbs of the 50 lbs I lost 2 years ago since beginning the sweater, so while it “fits,” it looks bad, and finishing it doesn’t mean I’ll get to wear it.)

Knitting aside, here is today’s eye candy. It’s some tulips I got just cause a couple weeks ago.

I’m not a big bandwagon rider, but this one intrigued me (and the previous 2 stoles Melanie‘s done are simply beautiful). I rooted through the laceweight stash and found 3 balls of Jaggerspun Wool Alpaca in Ocean Blue (I think) that I got from TheKnitter.com back when I first started knitting lace. Each ball is 1 7/8 oz and the Jaggerspun website says Wool Alpaca is 3920 yds/lb, so I think I have approximately 1400 yds. Now, I just need to take the swatch to the bead store and pick out some beads, although I’m not sure yet if I’m going to go for matching or contrasting beads, guess it’ll depend on what they have. I’ll also need to get a tiny crochet hook for putting the beads on the yarn.

While having time to just lay around letting your back heal is nice, laying around realizing how messy your apartment is and that you can’t do anything about it, not so nice.

Today, I think I’m at about 85-90%. Things are definitely still rather sore and tense, but I can do things like tie my own shoes and not walk like an old lady.

I did get a nice little bit of knitting done. I’m on the last repeat of Chart 2 of the Flower Basket shawl that I started sometime just after Stitches West 2007. I’m making it out of a 500 yd skein of 100% cashmere that I got from Just Our Yarn. (Side note: ooooo… they finally have puchasing on their website… This is the closest to the color I’m using on the website. Unfortunately, they don’t have the other color I had considered buying which was a pretty light blue with a couple darker colors mixed in. I used their 10/2 Tencel to knit my Icarus shawl last summer. Both yarns are really nice, and there’s good yardage for the price. They were also really nice at Stitches.)

I also finished the Swallowtail Shawl I was knitting out of my own handspun. Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show cause I haven’t been able to clear off my normal blocking area, so it’s just a pile of boiled ass at the moment. Once I’m back on my feet, the fiber room is getting a reorg, and the spare bed will be cleared off so I can block stuff.

My back had been bothering me after sleeping on a hard air matress over the weekend; just tweaky, didn’t think too much about it. Then, yesterday morning, I bent over to pick something up. Something shifted painfully and I almost fell over.

Yesterday was filled with pain.

Not only was there the general pain of throwing out my back, but everytime I moved or walked the muscles spasmed making me do my best impression of someone getting tasered.

I got to see my chiropractor twice so he could do some electro-muscle stimulation, which helped in the long run (in the short term it was just bad — I looked worse coming out than going in). Thankfully, I still had a few vicodin left over from my scooter accident 2 summers ago. That helped me get to sleep last night.

This morning I am doing better. The pain is about half of what it was (of course, all sorts of other things hurt this morning, too, from compensating for my weak back), and the spasms aren’t leaving me sweating and out of breath. My manager is allowing me to take a couple days off work, so I don’t have to worry about that. I get to spend my day trying not to move too much and icing my back for 20 minutes every hour. The husband has a midterm this morning, but then he’ll be working from home this afternoon so I have a helper monkey.

Last time I did this was about 7 years ago. This time is worst in its own ways, while not being as bad in others. The first time, I had horrible sciatica to go with the back pain and the pain was constant, but no spasms. This time, sitting or laying down doesn’t hurt too bad, but when a spasm happens it’s bad.

I messed myself up good this time.

E2A: Woolverine vs. Poly-Cotton Blend

Sadly, I’m not on the computer with all the photos. So, I have nothing to upload to show off.

I’m beginning to wonder if the end stretch of grad school is compatible with blogging. I have things to write about (such as I’ve never posted a review of the classes I took at Stitches West, and BigAlice asked so nicely), but any writing time I have should be devoted to the ugly mess that hangs above my head now — my thesis proposal. It’s due by the 18th, and I actually need to shoot to have it done by the 15th because I’m driving to Long Beach on the 16th for the Society of California Archivists’* annual conference.

I’ve been mostly focusing on gathering material for my literature review, but there isn’t really anything out there on my chosen topic**, which ironically is what makes it a great thesis topic (i.e., it’s original research). This summer will probably be spent creating the survey I will need to send out. Whee!

I guess I’m doing ok… the twitching hasn’t come back… yet.

Today’s eye candy is a swatch of some handspun Blue Faced Leicester that was dyed by Inspiration Yarns. This is the first Blue Faced Leicester I’ve ever spun, and it was rather nice. I got approximately 550 yards out of 4 oz. I’ve since started making the Swallowtail Shawl from Interweave Knits Fall 2006 with it.

Because I had finished the sock that I started to avoid working on the body of my sweater it was time to move on. The body was finished rather painlessly. It was time to cast on the first sleeve. Set-in sleeves from the top down aren’t as hard as I thought they would be.

I have a small issue with my shoulder cap short rows — the side where I picked up the wraps from the purl side have small holes. I have this problem with socks as well. Of course, I was well on my way when i reread the shoulder cap short row instructions. It’s written a bit badly… she talks about 2 different ways to do the short rows not wrapped or wrapped, and oh by the way, the way you should really do it is wrap the stitches but don’t pick up the wraps. *sigh*

But, I pressed on. Small detail… can’t see it from a galloping horse.

I was an inch away from the bind off of the first sleeve when I realized that the tickling feeling in the back of my brain that something wasn’t right was probably right. I had tried on the sleeve multiple times by this point, but there were no outright problems seen. I thought perhaps it just seemed off cause I have ridiculously skinny wrists (just a tad shy of 7″ around); the sleeve needed to decrease dramatically in order to fit.

I went back to the instructions, and yup, I missed a step in the math for figuring out the deecreases. So, I’ve ripped back to the end of the 1″ I worked even after finishing the sleeve cap. I added another inch of even st st, and am now re-embarking on newly figured decreases. I almost ripped the whole thing out, but figured the short rows weren’t that bad.