Holy cow, where did the time go?

Well, Jiminy Christmas, it's been a while. What's happened, let's see...I've

• taken a new job
• moved the family 1100 miles back to the East Coast
• had a baby

Sounds like one of those questionnaires looking at life stress, doesn't it? What's the same about my life anymore? Well, I'm

• still knitting!

Vacation - on a stick

The family just returned from the Minnesota State Fair, likely 5 pounds heavier, each. Among those things eaten include:





Deep fried Oreos


Pronto Pups


Honey ice cream


French fries


Corn fritters


Pizza


Hot dogs


Smores


...and my uncle ate a deep fried Snickers bar.





Oof.





Since I was in the Twin Cities area, I availed myself of yarn shops...including the one set up temporarily by a group of area yarn shops in downtown St. Paul: Yarns for All. Pretty cool idea. I also hit Yarn Garage and Borealis Yarns (who are one of the shops in Yarns for All). So...I got 6 different sock yarns, and some worsted weight Dream in Color for a Clapotis.







Yummy!

Back to work with a vengeance tomorrow, I'm afraid. *sigh* In-house overnight call. Bleah.

But Wednesday is...my daughter's pre-school open house. She's such a big girl! Cool.

Dye lot weirdness

rose garden shadows2, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

These two skeins of yarn are the same colorway.

I'll repeat that: These two skeins of yarn are the same colorway.

I received the skein on the right first. I was a bit perplexed. It is lovely. But the photo on Etsy looks like the skein on the left.

So I contacted the dyer, who said that some people had wanted more green in this colorway, called Rose Garden Shadows, so she had put more green in the second batch she dyed, and less grey overdye. She didn't update the photo on Etsy. She actually offered to take back the skein and overdye it with grey for me. How cool is that? However, I am keeping these both the way they are (I bought the one on the left from some beknighted person on Ravelry who, get this, wanted to SELL IT - how crazy is that??). The dyer suggested I might want to make a shawl, alternating the 2 skeins. It's a thought. For now, I will just pet them and love them (and call them George).

The back is done!

Elegance knit back, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

After reknitting the top right shoulder THREE times, I think I got it. It's not blocked, so the sides are curled in, and the neckline is all on the holder, so you can't see the shaping there.

Onward to the front!

Cool avatars! Meez.com

Cool beans.

Japanese knitting progress

Elegance knit2, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Ta da! The first repeat of the pattern! The pink stripe is the provisional cast-on, which I wouldn't have known about without Japanese-translation help from maymay on Ravelry.

Not too exciting, true, but at least I gt the photo up, which I've been meaning to do for a few days.

WWKIP Day!

I had a great time KIPping at the Viroqua Farmer's Market, and then at Ewetopia Fiber Shop (with a nice leisurely lunch in between with CathyCate from Ravelry). I'm afraid I didn't bring a camera (yes, a blogger's faux pas). I only bought one ball of handdyed sock yarn, plus a nifty magnetic board so I can more easily find my place while I knit The Cover Sweater (see earlier posts). Sweet.


In other news, after seeing that KnitPicks is now selling sock blanks, Judy, the owner of Baskets of Yarn decided to try knitting blanks on her Bond "Ultimate Sweater Machine." The Bond knits sport and heavier, so we hadn't thought to try it before...but KnitPicks knits the yarn doubled, so that the socks are identical when knit. Fingering doubled is approximately sport/DK weight. So...she tried it, and it worked! So I have (literally) dusted off my Bond (Incredible, upgraded to Ultimate, what will they call it if they ever improve it again???) and am poised to knit my own blanks. Hee hee hee!!

What's "swatch" in Japanese?

swatch1, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Well, I'm having catastrophic camera trouble photographing this, but here's my best shot of my swatch for The Cover Sweater. Since it's essentially ribbing and lace, the gauge can be practically anything depending on how much you stretch it! I seem to be in the ballpark - about 30 stitches in 10 cm. I like the fabric. So....I guess that's it then! Yee-hah.

Sweater obsession

Elegance knit, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

I must knit his sweater.

The instructions are in Japanese.

I do not read Japanese.

I must knit this sweater.

I think I can, I think I can.

Body Worlds

Wow.





My birthday present this year was a trip cross-state to see Body Worlds before it closes in Milwaukee. So I drove 3-1/2 hours each way to wander the exhibit for 3 hours.

Wow. Very, very cool.

The audio is mostly meant for laypeople, and so was pretty elementary to me, but the parts which were interviews with Dr von Hagens, the inventor of plastination, were worth the $5 cost of the audio. The couple of words the narrator mispronounced repeatedly made me a little annoyed, but ah, well.

If you get a chance to see this exhibit somewhere, GO.

The Stupidity of Dignity

Why, oh why, has America gone off the deep end with religion? Countries with actual national religions are not this insane.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/05/the_stupidity_of_dignity.php?utm_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link
Industrial grade insanium, my friends.

Stupid is as stupid spells.

stupid sign, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Oh. My. God. What a fabulously ironic sign. Enjoy.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Aiee! Work, parenting, dirty house, work, work....where's the knitting?

So anyway, I was SICK for 2 weeks, including over my board exam and vacation. Miss Maddy was sick for 2 days (during which I got next to no studying done) and then I cam down with the Dreaded Cold and coughed my guts out for 2 weeks. Couldn't sleep due to cold medicine overload or coughing, take my pick. Great timing. Bleah.

Spring seems to finally have arrived in La Crosse. Damned snowstorm on April 28th. Now, to yard work! Another time suck, thanks.

Started knitting Rainbow Socks (check 'em on ) with Austermann Step (ooh, jojoba oil and aloe, yum).

Pics to follow.

Went to a patient's funeral yesterday...yep, that means a baby. Two actually, but I can't say more. I'm glad I don't have to do that very often. I really liked these parents, and I hope they stick together. I really hate funerals though, because I find all the religious pablum mouthed by the clergy to be horrible. Didn't help that the stupid priest got the babies' father's name wrong. Came home and hugged the heck out of Miss Maddy.

Countdown to The Boards

Yikes! The Neonatal Boards are Monday! And 1000 miles away! And Monday!!

I'm not nervous. Nope. It's only my perceived competence on the line. Never mind that the people I work with and for seem to think I do just fine.

And we don't get the results until July, despite the fact that we fill in all those stinkin' dots with stinkin' pencils so a REALLY FAST COMPUTER can read our answers and calculate who passes and who goes down in flames in an instant.

Maybe the people who feed the papers into the machine are r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w, like someone put a molasses hex on them.

I don't know that any more studying will help at this point. I'll keep reciting formulae I need to know like a mantra...sensitivity and specificity, PPV and NPV, A-a gradient, OI, GIR, MAP, physiologic dead space, volume of distribution...and if you know what all those are, you're probably a neonatologist. It's the metabolic disorders that are eating me alive - there's no rhyme or reason to their names, so it's very hard to get a handle on them. I mean, some are named after people (Hurler syndrome), others after the missing enzyme (ornithine transcarbamoylase deficiency), and still others for the effect or symptom (maple syrup urine disease - and no, you don't piss maple syrup; it just smells like you do). Dagnabbit, can't we standardize these puppies?!?!

I'm going to bed.

Religious idiots let daughter die...in Wisconsin!

Wowsers - Wisconsin has this crazy, archaic law. So if you're deluded enough to think that the imaginary magic man in the sky will help your children through direct "divine" intervention, you can let them slowly die horribly...and that's okay.

I thought this was 2008. I thought we, as a society, had agreed to protect our children.

I have ranted about this elsewhere, and I think I'm just sad and burnt out now. Just....damn. If I believed in hell, I sure know who'd be going.

6 - 8" of spring

Blargh! Snow again! I suppose all the Easter eggs need to stay white so we can hide them in the snow. It's so nice to have an extra hour of daylight so we can stare at the snow longer.

Can you tell that I am sick of winter?

I'm also sick of studying and anticipating the neonatal boards...everything else is piling up on my desk. The review book puts me instantly to sleep (good to remember if I ever have insomnia again). And of course, stuff keeps cropping up that simple must be done right now.

Thank goodness this is my last on-call weekend before the boards: I've had 6 admissions. Sometimes the NICU feels like a Roach Motel: they check in, and they don't check out. Since your average 34-weeker stays a week or so, 6 admissions can really fill the place up for a while! I did discharge one today, but I'm still up 5! Tomorrow I get to hand it all off. Ahhhhh.

Ravelry as enabler (no, really?!?)

Blackberry hills, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Getting all (ha!) my stash into Ravelry has enabled me to wallow in my yarn, revel in it, and find stuff I forgot I had! Ican do this for hours and hours....I've got my the preschooler fetching me yarn. She counts, she practices her colors: it's educational, right?

Speaking of education, there's a referendum here in La Crosse about whether to spend more money on the schools. The school buildings themselves, mind you. Like the one with the 69-year-old boiler. I can't believe there are those out there who would begrudge a small (about $55 per $100,000 house value) tax increase to make safety updates on the schools. It's more involved that that, but essentially the opposition comes across as saying something on the order of, "I want good schools but I don't want to pay for it." DUH. End rant.

On another front, I tried to slice off the tip of my left thumb while cooking dinner Saturday evening. I have a nasty flap thing going on, and tomorrow morning's scrubbing in the NICU is going to be interesting to say the least. I'm thinking Steri-strips and a Tegederm. Right now I am making do with knuckle BandAids (because all the fingertip ones were already gone, I wonder why?).

Might buy a fishtank, been kicking it around. Photos later if so.

Ouch! This learning thing hurts!

Ow ow owie ow ow!

I'm at Neonatal Board Review at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza in Chicago.

Literally 9 - 10 hours per day of lectures on neonatal topics, meant to prepare me (and my fellow neos) for The Boards, which will be on April 7th. We ought to know this stuff - it's review. I think of it as a wake up call and refresher.

I don't feel very refreshed though, after SITTING for 9 hours straight.

I have been getting a lot of knitting done though. But my back hurts!

Two and half more days, then a nice 5-hour train ride back home again! Ow!

I think this hotel should lend their chairs to the CIA as a torture device.

Well golly gee, Ravelry is the best!

A-ha! After my no-help Berroco answer (see previous post), I checked out the sweater on Ravelry. And, lo and behold, someone made Sanpoku in Comfort, just like me!

Turn out I sewed the fronts on 90 degrees wrong. Thus the curling problem. Oh, the edges will still curl, but different edges. :-)

I wonder when I will finally feel like picking out the seams and resewing it the right way.

The Dreaded Stockinette Curl

sanpoku2, originally uploaded by iron knitter.

Okay, so I knit Berroco's "Sanpoku," substituting Comfort for the Touche (or Ultra Alpaca) specified in the pattern. See their pattern photos here: http://www.berroco.com/255.262/262/262_sanpoku_touche_pv.html

Look how their edges curl on the front: completely counter to how stockinette naturally curls. To see how stockinette naturally curls, look at my sweater photo.

So I email Berroco:

" I have recently knit Sanpoku, substituting Comfort. Now that it is done, I cannot see how you got the panels to curl inward at the top -
this is counter to how stockinette curls, and mine curls outward. Even with blocking, I don't see how you got the piece to hang the way it does. Any tricks?"

And here is the answer I (quickly) got:

"Hi Catherine,
Sorry no tricks. Comfort is nylon/acrylic. It's not going to
block, you shouldn't iron it, it just makes it limp. The Touche is
cotton/rayon so it act totally different."

Evidently cotton/rayon Touche curls toward the purl side at the bound-off edge. I think not. I can believe blocking it so hard that you get it to lay flat. But I don't see how to get it to drape that way. I'm double-hosed because you can't iron Comfort (unless you want to "kill" it).

I wonder if they sewed it down.

I've put my head together with Judy, the owner of my LYS, Baskets of Yarn, in Onalaska, WI (www.basketsofyarn.net). She thought of using a more elastic cast-on and bind-off, or putting a crochet edge on the bound-off edge...or tacking it down to the inside. Once I stop being so mad at the sweater, I'll think about which of these to attack first (NOT the one that involves taking the sweater apart, thank you).