MarQ1

I’ve said it before, but it there anything grosser than raw chicken? Within, of course, the rather limited range of foods I eat.

The rubber gloves help. Without them I’d be cleaning up puke now.

The dishwasher is now on the two-hour-long sanitizing cycle. I’d get in if I could.

Dinner, btw, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts breaded with reduced-fat sour cream and a mixture of breadcrumbs, walnuts, parmigiano reggiano, sage, (a dash) nutmeg, salt and pepper, all whacked together in the food processor. And a salad. It will be good.

If I didn’t dislike vegetables so much, I’d be a vegetarian.

And there’s a giant pot of tomato sauce on the stove as well.

This is F&F temporarily off the needle.

I frogged back three rounds, put it back on a #1 Am circ, then discovered that frogging four—as I originally suspected—would actually have been correct; and tinked back an entire round onto the #5 Am circ. I am now almost back where I was before I frogged.

Somehow I expected it to be bigger off the needle.

This is my third piece of lace currently on the needles, a scarf made in Wool in the Woods Cameo (rayon) using the Grapevine Pattern from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The color is Rosebud. The coral pink looked for a while like it would create a diagonal stripe up the scarf, but it stalled. I’ve knit a bit more since that shot and the pink may finally be moving off the center, again to the right.

Rain all day, ranging from a few sprinkles to a downpour.

Mary Beth asked for the pattern for the scarf I made for my old boss. I made it up, and at the time wrote something down, but whatever that was it wasn’t the scarf I knit. The most obvious problem was that I cast on 45, but each row as written had 49 stitches. I should take better notes.

Using Knit Visualizer from www.knitfoundry.com I charted out the pattern several times and several ways, referring back to the photos I had taken of the unfinished scarf. Turns out I had only cast on 45 and most of problem came from mis-counting the M1’s.

And here we have the resultant pattern, with chart and text: Undulant #2 (pdf)

The software is pretty good. It charts with the mouse or by translating text. As you can see, it prints out both the symbols and instructions for both right and wrong side rows. The selection of symbols is fairly broad, but it could use one for make one-purlwise. I had to use a color symbol. Since in print preview you can edit the instructions, but not the symbol name, a small improvement would be to have a few symbols for special instructions. You can also edit the text pattern as well, which I found necessary since the text is a direct translation of the chart.

In other knitting news, because one just can’t have too many lace projects going at once, I’ve started a lace scarf in rayon for a friend with a wool sensitivity. Pictures later. Birch is in my desk drawer at work, making slow progress during conference calls. F&F, unfortunately, needs to be frogged back 4 rounds. I managed to miss two yarn-overs, one after the other on the last increase row. After I finish the laundry, I’ll lay it out on the bed and frog.

Weather-wise, it’s like fall today: cool and damp—too wet to bike.

I’ve done practically nothing in leisure except read all week. A Suitable Boy, of course. I have not enjoyed a book more in ages. The only improvement would have been to divide it into volumes so I could carry it on the subway, it being a bit bulky to handle with one hand.

When I wasn’t reading the book, I was looking up references on the internet. I had to look up dhoti and kurta among other things, then, of course, I thought about whether I could get away with wearing them. Probably not. Waistlines would definitely be less of an issue, however.

Usually, if I am within fifty pages of the end of a book, I cannot put it down and will read until I’m done, no matter how near to bedtime I am. In a book this size and this good, I hit that point somewhere between 150 and 100 pages from the end. Not good, since I hit it about 11:15 or so. I finished the book anyway, and would do it again—and probably will.

It was 1:10 am when I went to bed, quite satisfied.

And I got up at 5:35. And napped on the sofa from 5:40 to 6:10, but still made it to work by 7:45.

On page 1163 of the 2005 paperback edition, we find Mrs Rupa Mehra knitting baby booties.

Stephanie wrote this, “Saturday, September 16th I’ll be at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble in Brooklyn at 7:30.” on her post today.

*all a-twitter*

Twelve bogus visitors.

One spam caught in the moderator queue.

Forty-nine requests blocked for pretending to be something they weren’t.

No spam caught by the blacklist. The other filters got there first.

This is a typical Tuesday, a peak day apparently for s‍p‍a‍m‍mers.

I had to bring Birch home with me. I couldn’t bring myself to frog in the office. I started swatching for a sock instead.