October 2005 Archives

Goodnight Yarn!

A shot from the stairs up towards the front window (isn't it so nice and shiny?) with the new bookcases and some yarn.

This is what you'd see if you walked in the front door right now.

So today I was defeated by one Crate and Barrel Chair, a stack of cardboard, and a half oval leaf on the Gallant Desk. My furniture making mojo decided to take off for vacation, I guess. My legs certaintly got a good workout going up and down the stairs, though.

But what was my reward for doing all this? See this? This is what I got to put away.

Hellllloooo Lobster Pot and NoNo Kitty. Go ahead, enlarge the photo. You see the second cube from the right on the top row? Cashmere Lobster Pot yarn. Yes. Wasn't that a nice reward?

Why is all the yarn wrapped up you ask? Hidden from your lustful views? You want to see it already ? Well, darling, this is only our second date. I may not be a tease, but I'm certaintly not easy ;)

If you're ever around San Francisco, especially if you're down in the South Bay, please come by the store! (Monday and after, that is, unless you want to label yarn... which really, while slow, has its own rewards )

Full Thread Ahead Store Location
169 Main Street,
Los Altos, CA
(650) 948-9036 Hours:
Monday - Friday 11am-7pm (Look, open late!)
Saturday - Sunday from 11am - 5pm

Why? Why?!! Because today is the day we stuff the store!

Yesterday, Full Thread Ahead was a busy beehive of furniture assembly and heavy move-in. I wouldn't want to tease knitters who own sock needles, so I'll just paint you the mental picture to spare you the anguish of seeing of a yarn store with ... no yarn in it.

It was sunny, the new wood floors had construction dust on it, the swiffer-ish spray and swipe broom was doing more than it was ever built to do as we tackled the post construction mess. The store had light fixtures but was devoid of any put together furniture. Insert lots of people doing furniture assembly and move-in¹ and repeat for many hours. At the end of the day there were Eight (8! 8! 8!) bookcases up, many chairs, tables, and a sofa (which yours truly mostly put together, so if you sit and it breaks, come yell at me).

And yet, today, as the sun is slowly slowly coming up, I laid in bed where it seemed that my normal sleep addiction suddenly turned into ... wait for it... more bouncy than a kid on Christmas hyped up with a venti mocha frappucino. Yeah. I wasn't actually bouncing, but my head was practically playing the super bounce out music.

So evidently add stuffing an empty yarn store fuuuuuuuullllll of yarn to the things I will get up early and happily for.²

Today, I will bring my camera so you mini yarn-harlots out there can breathe with relief, knowing that the yarn store contains much much yarn goodness. Honestly, showing a yarn store bereft of yarn (other than for potential) could possibly be considered knitterly cruel and unusual punishment. Or I'd be a yarn tease.

And oh, if you should ever open a store, remember scissors, a socket wrench or three with hex bits, and your patience. If you know a good way to clean a laminate wood floor, please leave a comment!

Lastly, it looks great (what, you expected otherwise?) Just how great you'll just have to wait! The woman has wifi in her store. Wireless internet access in a yarn store. ::bounce::

¹ Sweet volunteers, should all you want is a peek at the store or to stuff yarn, please say so. Those who volunteer on a first day should expect to be put to the unglamorous jobs. This is mostly true for any volunteer opportunity that involves put-up or tear-down. Maybe some people never thought about this but I just figured I've give you this nugget of wisdom to chew on. It keeps the people who don't mind putting together jigsaw puzzles of furniture happy and people who want to fondle the yarn happy :)

² The others are travel... spectacular shopping... Though I don't bounce to get up for 7am classes, get up indeed I do.

The socks are finished! They're with my momma on a trip right now and I hope they're keeping her feet warm in their wooly goodness.

Thanks to Savannahchik who was kind enough to put up practically the entire book of Handknit Holidays

I felt the need to point out a few of my (somewhat odd) favorites: [pics copied from Savannahchik]

Somewhat odd = somewhat girly but gosh they're cute (the stockings and slippers)

Charlene also picked up the volume 4 amigurumi¹ book which features cute crochet animals which look to be excellent x-mas gifts! (And may be a good inexpensive option, too) I do have a few Japanese pattern/stitch legend books that I'll be sending her way in return for usage of the book :)

Just how cute are these little toys? Here go take a look after you loosen up your jaw to say awwww lots.

¹ Crochet, knitted, or sewn soft toys according to amigurumi along

Wow. That's a yarn winder made out of LEGOs. Makes me drool. Check out the pictures and if you, too happen to have some spare motors (not as odd as this sounds) and access to the specialized parts, go get your geek on.

Now where'd I put those k'nex Robin gave me? I need a swift.

Jess Hutchinson makes these really cute knitted robots. This would be a fun way to use your single balls of orphan yarns or odd balls.

Lots of other knitted stuffed toy ideas at her site Jess Hutch Arts and Crafts. Swoon with cuteness.

The blog has been silent on the knitting front but my needles have seen lots of action these last few days. Kae was right when she said I might plan to knit another pair of socks in the near future...

I've been a diligent little knitter, especially considering that I started this over the weekend and am knitting this on US#2's. The yarn is lovely Koigu I picked up at Knit Happens during my vacation in DC and the colorway also happens to be my mom's "LOOK!!!! PURPLE!!!!" must buy now colors. These will be her socks even though they might wind up being closer to my foot size than hers. Our feet aren't all too different in size but it is hard to get her foot into the wip while they're only on 3 dpns. Still, I run to her now and then to demand her foot. She likes to stick it out with all her toes spread and I make her unspread them before she loses a toe to a dpn. I also occasionally hold the sock up so she can see the purple blob 15 feet away. Like a good mother she makes positive noises while keeping her eyes glued to the tv except for the quick 2 second look.

The pattern is Falling Leaves and yes, the sock does look rather wide, because I figured since I knit extremely tight, I'd best use #2's instead of 2.5mm needles to ensure the socks would fit our chubby feet. Purple Explosion is a bit wide but that is totally fixable with a nice hot water soak (being careful not to swish) and a quick tumble through the dryer, I'm hoping. And too big still is better than too small...

Mods¹ - Instead of using the short row- yo method- toe and heel, I started out with a figure eight cast on except I cast on 12 stitches instead of eight. This is probably what is giving the sock the "sixth toe wiggle room" you see with the corners puckering out. The heel was a 3rd hour desperation version of Japanese Short Rowing. I have some execution issues but I still have another sock to practice them on. Lastly, I stopped short rowing about five stitches in from both edges of the heel because I was concerned that a wonky angle was being formed at the heel- it might have pulled the heel flap behind your tendon in too far causing the sock to rub. Nothing says love like handknit socks you can't wear because they give you blisters.

And that is why my left thumb hurts.
fn1. Mods = Modifications.

Jay Allen, one of the product managers at SixApart which produces Movable Type, left a comment on how to decipher the is-spam-not-spam logic ? Wow. I'm
a) flattered that such an awesome dude left me a comment
b) that SixApart looks for these entries (trust me, I know how many blog reads I get, and I soooo know that Six Apart doesn't read this blog, so they must be doing a really smart search for feedback on MT given specific factors that I do have an idea about) and
c) that Jay took the time to leave a comment to explain it to me so I can use MT 3.2 and the SpamLookup plugin more efficiently. Now I feel really important to them, indeed. Unsolicited comments and help. Wow.

This is what I call Proactive Customer Service. They're doing what many smart companies are doing nowadays - tracking what's being said about their product in blogland. Then they sent the genius who created all this lovely anti-spam (Which, btw Jay, really really works well. Much less spam after I started using SpamLookup instead of MT Blacklist.) to leave a comment. Or someone on his behalf, which is also cool.

I do feel like I should disclose that I'm a member of sixApart's ProNet professional network of developers. Even though I signed up more in a "keep my head in the loop" type of thing rather than an active developer, I still feel I should mention it. They gave me a Network Member License for free when I joined; the license entitles me to actual customer support from sixapart via trouble tickets. This is important because it really gives me a someone to talk to when I have a problem or see an area for possible improvement. Long ago I went with Movable Type because I knew they would probably go commercial- they were a tightly knit core of developers who literally had a real investment in making MT into a good product. BTW, this is in no way to say that I don't love the open source software communities and their efforts- I do and there are several products which I really love created by open source communities. Just saying that in the budding age of the internet, Ben and Mina made an effort to make money off of what they thought was a great idea and had to produce a great product so people would want to pay for it. It should come as no surprise that it can be pretty tough these days to create a product people are willing to pay for when something similar could be had for free. Some people prefer WordPress, especially when MT started restricting their free license with version 3.x. Personally, I prefer my world cut and dry- either give it to me for free without ads or ask me to pay for it. Don't do some tiny advertisement insertion on the bottom of your homepage where only browser bots can see it so you can avoid asking me to donate.

Many thanks to Jay and SixApart for following up on a question which wasn't even submitted to them, at least not by me. Go have a read about their Project Comet which aims to bring blogging into the mainstream. Privacy Settings, media rich, and easy to stay updated. I dig that.

I am all for telling someone thanks, you did an awesome job

This was my tire after meeting with Charlene. I noticed a whump whump whump. I pulled over to take a look only about 5 minutes drive from home. Then I did what a sensible woman does at 10:15pm on a Friday night when faced with parking in the curbside zone of a dark-ish neighborhood- called AAA.

Tomorrow morning will be early as I now need to hit the tire shop before I go to Yoga. And find out what caused the sidewall to separate... Good thing this didn't happen on the Freeway. Or on my way to meet Char. Maybe it did and I was just oblivious?! Hopefully, this doesn't have anything to do with how I inflated the tire a week ago (but it was the other side that was really low).

BTW, this was a decent photo at night for a phonecam with a completely dark screen which was lit with the led "disco light" flash on my phone. Couldn't see a thing when I was taking the photo.

Wonder how many tires they're going to need to replace... :/
2. They swapped the old front tires to the rear and put the new tires in the front, since my car is a front wheel drive. Also credited me with a bit of warranty money which made the new tires a bit more affordable. They did say I could do only one tire, but the other back tire could use changing, too and it is recommended that I change out a pair at a time. All of it mostly painless.

All done :)

I'm transferring my domain since a) the existing one is a bit expensive and b) I want to add some privacy control to my DNS listing.

It should be over within a week, which is all good since I don't really have much to say this week. Life is being consumed by school, almost getting out of school, getting on the "give me a job, please, because I'm wonderful" wagon, and finishing up the baby cardigan.

I had 13, 13!!!!, valid comments in my "junk comments" category. Movable Type 3.2 changed the comment preview process and I never knew I needed to check the possible junk comments. Usually comments are e-mailed to me so I can approve them but the suspected junk comments aren't e-mailed.

So, be sure to check your "Junk Comments" section if you use MT 3.2. People may actually be commenting on your blog, never seeing your comments, and never ever ever commenting again (Please, I've learned my lesson. I love comments and please leave some). Sorry!

There were 13 comments and all 13 were not junk. Why MT thought one comment was junk and the other was not, given the same commentor, I don't know. Some of that delicious spamranking algorithm, I guess.