Now you too can have the stash I have! Well sort of…. Blue Moon has unveiled their SOCK CLUB!!!
Exorcism!
February 22, 2006 By
NO CAVITIES! YAY! None for me, none for Georgie! Safe for another six months. Whew!
I’m writing this Tuesday night because tomorrow I’m going to meet Ann and Daughter#2 (hey Ann – will I have to call her Daughter #2? Or does she have a more conventional name?) to give them the oh my god its been 15 years since I graduated from college tour of NYU. I hope I don’t forget all the good score corners at Washington Square. There will be lunch and there will be yarn shops in the mix. Even though I didn’t knit when I was in college. Ann canceled on me because she’s hacking up a lung and was generous enough to keep her Avian Flu away from me. And she more than made up for it with this photograph. Please, PLEASE go read her post. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Oh my god I LOVE YOU ANN!
This post, though, is about exorcism. (That should be good for the google hits!) You all know about the sideboard brouhaha, and in order to put it all past us and load up that baby with yarn, I felt like I needed to exorcise the evil karma that came along with my mistake. I’ve been thinking about what I could do and this morning I said to G I should burn the directions and he said that was perfect. So I did it. (G wasn’t home when I actually did do it and I think if he saw the amount of FIRE produced he would’ve changed his mind in a hurry!)
First, I followed Ann’s advice and found myself a metal bowl and put it in my sink. Then I collected the materials I wanted to burn. (You should know, that this was really about burning stuff. I never burn stuff but somehow I really wanted to burn stuff. You know?) I thought about it and I decided that besides the directions, I would put some scraps of yarn from my past jaywalkers and a bit of fiber. So STR and Corriedale went into the pot.
I put it all in the bowl and lit the stuff on FIRE.
KIDS! Do NOT try this at home!
I gotta tell you FIRE is scary. I let the sucker burn for a couple of seconds and then there were flames like everywhere and THEN I remembered to grab the camera. Duh. Anyway, so I snapped a few pictures and then turned on the faucet. Tina at BMFA told me the yarn and fiber would smell like shit when it burned and it didn’t really, but honestly, I don’t know if the yarn/fiber ever really caught on fire. But it was bad anyway and I put the fan on in the kitchen. Then the phone rang and I was freaked that it was the building calling me to complain about the smoke (there really wasn’t any at all) but it was just Ann.
So I burned the stuff, but that didn’t seem like enough. So I went back into my bedroom and built myself a little shrine of STR and then lit my favorite candle ever and really the only candles I ever burn – Lemon Verbena from L’Occitane.
I lit the candle and said the Shehecheyanu. When I was done, I turned and looked out the window and found this:
I’m loading up this baby tonight! Pictures to come are in the extended entry.
Come Play With Us
February 21, 2006 By
So Becky tagged me for the “The View from Your Front Door” meme. I told her that it would be really, really boring. I’m not so sure she believed me.
I live in a high rise apartment building, so looking out my front door gives me a wall. A very boring wall. I thought I’d take a picture of the hallway too. This is walking straight out my front door and turning left:
It’s a crappy picture of the hallway, but it’s usually pretty dark out there. They’re supposed to be re-doing the hallways in the building – walls, carpeting, lighting. They’re charging us a gazillion dollars but the board’s fighting about it. As usual. Supposedly it was all supposed to be started and halfway completed by now and I think they painted the stairwells and maybe ripped out one floor. Fun, fun, fun! Anyway, the most interesting thing I can say about my hallway is that sometimes it scares the freaking crap out me. (Ask Jen. She’ll tell you. I totally wigged her out the other day.) It’s because sometimes, when I’m walking down from the elevator to my apartment, all I can think about is the twins in The Shining. You know – the ghost girls who want Danny to play and then the hallway fills with blood and I literally break into a run to my apartment. I hate scary movies and I think The Shining, with Jack Nicholson, is one of the scariest movies ever. But yet, whenever it’s on, I have to watch it.
I much prefer the view from my balcony:
For this very nice meme I will tag: Jasmin (because I learn something new on her blog everyday), Kris (because she’s my bp and she lives far from me), Stephanie (because she has a beautiful blog and lives in a beautiful place), and Kimberly (because she takes great pictures and here’s a good excuse to take some more.) Do you want to do it? Well, then, I tag you too!
I may have exorcised the Ikea Demons yesterday when G and I test drove a car out of Sweden known for its safety and family appeal. Welp this car is the fastest car I’ve ever driven and I’ve driven some fast cars. The last time we had that much fun in a test drive we bought the car. We’re still a couple of months away from any decisions, but I know what I want. Actually, I have to say that car shopping yesterday was one of the most pleasant experiences we’ve had in a while. Two dealerships, two different cars, two test drives. No one gave us a hard sell. Both salespeople loved the cars they were selling. Both extremely likable. I’d feel good buying a car from either one. And that says a lot. What was interesting too is that one salesperson had been in the business for over 20 years. The other was just barely OVER twenty years OLD. But that second test drive, with the young guy, MAN was that fun. You know you’re in for a good time when the salesguy gets in the car and says, don’t worry, I went to Skip Barber. Yipeee! G and I are still laughing over it!
I’m off to the dentist today. Blah. I hate the dentist. Well, I actually like my dentist and everyone in the office. I’ve been going there for 15 years and G something like 20. In fact we both have appointments today – one after the other. All together now: AWWWW! We get to see each other in the middle of the day, which is always a treat and may just help relieve the awful anxiety I get at the dentist. And it’s going to be bad today – I haven’t been in a while.
I leave you with my knitting from yesterday. Favorite STR EVAH! 😉
P.I.S.S.
February 20, 2006 By
As the indomitable Snow put it, I’m suffering from Post Ikea Stress Syndrome. P.I.S.S. How great is that?
When last you found our intrepid Heroine, I was going to take the fucker apart and show it who’s BOSS! On Saturday G and I ventured out to a Lowe’s to get some supplies for rip down and rebuild. I think we were successful. Things were looking up!
Cedar balls, for the finished product, and an electric screwdriver. I was OPTIMISTIC!!!
We started to take the thing apart. The first thing we had to do was get those little grabby half circle things out of the holes – you know the ones that hold the metal thingamajigs? You don’t? Consider yourself lucky because once you get those things in there they don’t freaking come out! So we’re trying our hardest to get these fuckers out and it’s amazing we’re still married and we can’t get them out. Then I think hey! Maybe all I have to do is unscrew these screws over here and I can get it out! No go. Those little wooden Ikea pegs things that I want to stick in some Swedish designer’s eye are everywhere in this piece so even if you take the screws out you can’t get the thing apart. So we’re back to trying to get the top off so we can begin to TRY to take the thing apart but we can’t do it. I’m crying. I want to throw the thing out. And G’s totally with me. I call Ikea and ask them if I can drop the thing off and pick up a new one, since I can’t take it apart. The woman tells me I can return it fine, but it has to be unassembled. In the calmest, most exacerbated voice I have I tell her that if I could get it apart, I wouldn’t have to bring it back. She puts me on hold. I want to set fire to everything around me made of particle board. She comes back and tells me that they’ll take it, but I’ll have to pay an additional percentage, depending on its condition, over and above the 30% restocking fee. I say thank you and hang up. We consider this. Really, really consider this.
One problem. The freaking thing won’t fit in our car.
So we, two intelligent creative people, think of what to do. We’ll rent one of those trucks from Home Depot! Yeah! That’s it! And we’ll take it back to Ikea and get 50% or less than what we paid for it then buy a new one! Then return the truck! So we’ll be out an extra $500 but it will be PERFECT!
I actually made a few phone calls to some people to see if I was crazy to do this (G was right there with me, god love him!) but no one was home. Which turned out to be a very, very good thing.
This is CRAZY! I thought. GO BACK AND RETHINK! I was right when I started. Go back and drill the freaking holes in the wood. Turns out that middle piece, remember? It’s not particle board. It’s solid wood. Maybe that’s why it’s the piece that holds the whole sideboard together? Anyway, we get to measuring and turning it this way and on its head and every which way and in the end WE DO IT! WE DRILL HOLES AND THE DRAWERS WORK! And it’s all fixed and we can dance and sing and rejoice.
Almost.
As I’m finishing the rest of the drawers, I realize that one of the reasons you needed to put that freaking piece of wood in the right way, besides the holes, is that the stain is on the front side out. You know. To match up with the rest of it. So I’ve got all the drawers in and everything’s together and this thing ain’t never coming apart, but I’ve got a nice solid piece of PINE sticking out of my DARK WALNUT dresser. FUCK!
Off to Home Depot we go.
It looks good enough for me, so please don’t tell me if it looks bad. Seriously. I don’t want to know. This thing about killed me. I have poly for it too but I’m letting it go for now. I can always poly it later. Jacobean MinWax if anyone’s interested.
You think that’s the end of the story, don’t you? It’s NOT! So I hated the drawer pulls that came with the dresser and I walked into Restoration Hardware and found the perfect pulls IMMEDIATELY. Bought them, brought them home, tried them out. BINGO! They don’t fit. Well, they fit, but the screws were too short and they didn’t come with backs. What the? So on our venture to Home Depot we got some longer screws and some nuts and washers and problem number 3,719: the screws are silver and the pulls are a dark bronzy color. So the guy at Home Depot suggests we paint the screws. We buy paint and long discussions ensue on what’s the best way to paint these little teeny tiny screws that will attach the draw pulls that I adore for the dresser that I now loathe.
The ones I love on the left, the Ikea icky ones on the right.
Not to fear, my lovelies. At around midnight Saturday night in a stain induced haze I figured out the problem. So genius am I.
See (well you can’t really see, but take my word for it) the Ikea pull has like a tube that extends through the hole in the drawer front and you screw in the screw into the back. So what I figured out is that I could attach the Ikea drawer pull onto the INSIDE of the drawer and screw in the screws on the beautiful drawer pulls into the tubes from the front. Make sense? Look at the picture again. It makes perfect sense and better yet it WORKS!
For all intensive purposes fuck it This thing is FINISHED. I do like it. I like it a lot. But I’m still mad so I’m not filling it with yarn just yet. I want that to be a kind of spiritual event. So I need a day or two. Soon though. I’m getting there. Recovery is hard.
Knit Olympics:Day Ten: PROGRESS!
I started the second mitten. As I mentione
d before, I’m doing the reverse on the second one. Pink as the Main Color, Navy as the contrast. I like it! I’m confident these mittens WILL be finished by next Sunday.
I also started a couple of socks:
On the left is the ribbing for the Embossed Leaves Socks from the Winter 2006 IK (do I really need to link to it?) in Koigu #P704 and on the right is a new Jaywalker in STR Panzanite (no it’s not on their website and Toni at The Fold doesn’t have it – if you like it, call and ask for it!)
We’re off to look at cars today. G has a spreadsheet with him. Oh fun!
L, C
DUDE!!!! I totally did it!
February 19, 2006 By
I took up Bonne Marie‘s double dog dare and GOT ON THE RADIO TO TALK TO ANN AND KAY!!! Ohmygod I was so freaking nervous. There’s still time to call!
New! And IMPROVED!
February 17, 2006 By
HOLY CRAP! You guys really know how to make a girl feel good! I’m glad you like the new stuff. I like it too – although I’m still tweaking. I think things are good for a bit. I wanted to add too that I found my inspiration for my header at Sydney’s. I took out a couple of the lines, but I still like the way they break things up a bit. I think it adds to the abstract nature of many of the photographs.
Thanks again! I’m really touched by all the comments!!!!
Instead of knitting, I played with the blog a bit. Refresh the page a couple of times. 😉 Let me know what you think! Thanks!
Knit Olympics: Day Seven: HOT FLASH!
February 17, 2006 By
First off, thank you everyone for your commiseration and suggestions with the whole Ikea thing. There really shouldn’t have been any doubt in your minds that I wouldn’t take apart the whole thing and rebuild it. The glue thing was just a nod to G, who came up with the idea, and honestly, a temporary lapse in judgement. I will be rebuilding it tomorrow. With finished pictures of amazing goodness on Monday. I had two favorite comments from the lot of you: Stacey said, “Like knitting, you would frog it if you discovered a huge mistake way back. Leaving it as is may be bad karma for the knitting to be held in it!” Food for thought! I’m a HUGE believer in Karma and this one is very, very true. It would be like putting a curse on my yarn! Can’t have that. And the other great comment was from Carrie K., who said, “Oh, how horrible! I say burn the thing and start over.” Oh my, Carrie, if I had the money, that’s exactly what I’d do. My OCD perfectionist self would LOVE to throw it out the window, drive to Ikea and get a brand new one. Also, I find Carrie’s comment wonderfully ironic, given that her blog is called My Middle Name is Patience. HAHAHAHAHA! Isn’t that great?
A little update for you – G’s hip isn’t as bad as we thought. The pain isn’t being caused by bone rubbing against bone, rather the theory is the pain is being caused by tendonitis, which in turn is being caused by all the crap floating around the bad bones and stuff. His hip is still really bad and EVENTUALLY he will need replacement surgery, but for now we’re going to try to fix the severe tendonitis and do some hardass PT as a way to strengthen the muscles around the hip to better support the area. To wit, yesterday he had a cortisone shot in his hip. To get it precisely right they had to do a “special procedure” which meant the hospital and hospital gowns and no eating before hand etc. His shot was pretty delayed so there was plenty of waiting time to do this:
Honestly, I was going to cast on a new pair of jaywalkers but I brought a size 2 and a size 1 and at least now Ann will stop her bitchin’ that I’m going to lose. It seems she has some sort of wager riding on me. Alas, I’m not completely finished.
I think I’m going to start on the second mitten before I get to the thumbs. I’ll do both thumbs together. I’m going to plug along on these gloves, but, the bloom is off the needle, so to speak. If I hadn’t brought the wrong needles, I would NOT have been knitting them. Is it bad to say I’m a bit bored by them? I am. But I’m an knathlete, so I persevere.
Did you see that new spanky yarn in the picture?
Oh my god can you STAND all that pinky goodness?!?! Do NOT tell me it looks like pepto bismol because I LOVE it and also because I will have the pepto dance in my head all day. (Do yourself a favor, PLEASE click on the pepto link!)
Anyway, this fibery goodness is a NEW Socks That Rock color – HOT FLASH! How great is that? I’m thinking a picot edge plain stockinette sock because the stripes are thicker and I’ve decided I don’t like jaywalkers with thicker stripes. I think they look best when there are lots of colors. What do you think? I ripped out the other stockinette socks I was making way back when and I’m not sure I can do it anymore. But I can try!
ETA: Every color you’ve ever seen of Socks That Rock ON THIS BLOG is available directly through Blue Moon Fiber Arts. All you need to do is call or email with the name of the colorway you’ve seen and ask them if it’s still available (they do retire colorways.) They have over 200 different color combinations – their website and Toni’s site, and my site for that matter, only show a fraction of the colors available. They are planning to unveil more colors on the website – but these things take time – and I for one would rather they dye yarn, then worry about web stuff! 😉
Thanks again for all your comments about G’s hip and possible replacement surgery. We’re feeling really optimistic that he has at least a few years before we have to worry about surgery – he even sent in his membership fees for the tennis club this summer, so he’s definitely feeling better. We appreciate all your kind words and thoughts.
Today has been declared cast on day. I’m going to cast on two socks and my mitten and then I’m going to weave in Short Row ends. I don’t feel real well – awful horrible headache yesterday that’s come back today and I think I’m getting a cold, but not really. So I feel like crap – but not enough to say I’m SICK. You know? Hope you’re well and have a great weekend. WISH ME IKEA LUCK!
The Agony of Defeat
February 16, 2006 By
Knit Olympics? What’s that? We’re talking Team Ikea here. And trust me when I say this is KILLING me. There was cursing. There were tears. And yes, there was even a bit of blood. But I was cruising on this damn sideboard and I could see the home stretch. I had the room all Martha Stewarted out in my mind when it all came down on me in a crushing, soul-sucking moment of misplaced wood.
I’d like to say I’m an expert Ikea builder. At this moment, I have no less than 32 pieces of furniture in my apartment from Ikea – all built almost exclusively by me. Fourteen of those are Billy bookcases, which I can build with my eyes closed. I’m not taking into account the gazillions of pieces of furniture we’ve since thrown out, other pieces I’ve built at my sister’s house, pieces I’ve built for friends. If you want something built from Ikea, you call me.
So yesterday, as I set out to build my gorgeous new yarn cabinet, I did what I always do. First, I spread out all the pieces.
4:07 PM EST
Then, I put together all the nuts and bolts and weird Ikea thingamajiggys that don’t look like they’d hold anything together but somehow they do.
4:31 PM EST
Then I go through the directions at least once to see if there’s anything I haven’t already seen before, and get to work. The worst part of Ikea directions is figuring out which side things go on – there are always so many freaking holes in everything and you really have to pay attention. PAY ATTENTION. Get it? Anyway, I started building around 4:45 and I was cruising along – things were going pretty well. There was a moment or two and some chipped particle board when I tried to get the top of the thing onto the rest of the structure. I think I can safely say the top weighs almost as much as I do and it’s almost as tall as me so trying to get all those wood freaking pegs into the holes while matching up the silver doohickeys almost killed me. I say almost because goddamnit, I did it. All by myself.
7:58 PM EST – Ignorance is bliss!
Once the base structure was up, I took a little break and put the new lamp on top and stood back to admire my work. It was going to be great! And I still might have time to build the nine freaking drawers before G got home. No way was I going to have time to fill it, but that’s okay. He’d get the idea.
I started with a little drawer and the first part went well. I finished the first three and then went to attach the runner track that lets the drawer move in and out smoothly. This is a fairly new Ikea innovation. In the old days you just had these clip things – the drawers stuck a lot. The new way is better, but jeezus it was hard to get those little screws screwed in. I had all my tools around me and alas, I don’t think I had the perfect freaking philips head – even though I had about seven philips head screwdrivers in front of me. At this point, my hands are a mess. My palms are killing me – both of them – from screwing in four thousand screws and my back is aching from sitting hunched over on the floor. At least I stopped sweating from when I was trying to get the two-ton top on the structure. Anyway, I was tired and hungry and I slipped with the screwdriver and managed to screw my thumb instead of the screw. Fucker bled a lot too. In the end, it’s a pretty superficial wound, and I managed to stop the bleeding and get on with my work. Once you start an Ikea piece of furniture, you don’t stop for anything. Well, almost anything.
So I’m getting the drawers down good now. I’m doing all the tops first, then attaching the drawer part and in between I’m attaching the runners, because that’s the hard part with the little screw and the wrong size screwdriver and the bum thumb. Every time I finish a drawer I put it in to see how nice it’s goes in and out. This is when I find out that I’ve attached some of the tracks on the base structure incorrectly. Upside down or the left one on the right and so forth but it’s easily fixed. So I fix it.
Here’s where the agony part comes in. I finish one of the two drawers in the middle and go to put it in. But it’s not going in at all. I figure, okay, time to switch out the track on the body. Check it out. DISASTER. I realize that I’ve made a blunder of such colassal proportions I want to kill myself ON THE SPOT. I want to take one of those ill-fitting philips heads and hammer it through my heart. I want to lay on the floor and PULL OVER the four thousand pound gorilla ON TOP of my body and martyr myself to the Ikea gods.
The tracks weren’t on wrong. THE FUCKING PIECE OF WOOD IS ON WRONG. This is the middle piece of wood holding the whole damn thing together. Possibly the first piece I attached. In order for me to fix this, I would have to TAKE APART THE ENTIRE PIECE OF FURNITURE. Everything connects to this piece of wood. And it’s not freaking particleboard either, or maybe it is, but I tried to make a new hole so I could attach the track in the right direction and I couldn’t get through the piece of wood. At this point I’m so desperately sad I make myself something to eat. And I’m not a tension eater. It’s about 10:30.
Around this time, G calls. He’s on his way home and he can hear that I’m upset but this whole thing was a surprise for him and I’m not going to ruin the last remaining joy in the project just so I can bitch. They’ll be time enough for that when he gets home. I fuck with it a bit more, then he does get home and I proceed to burst into tears immediately. He absolutely LOVES the piece and he’s so upset for me because he knows how these Ikea things are being that he can’t read the directions for shit and usually willingly succumbs to my “so-called” expertise. He gets out the drill (which, admittedly, I don’t know how to work) and we try to drill the hole I’ve made deeper. It sort of works, but it’s all wonky and when you put the drawer in it’s very lopsided. Doesn’t work for me. I cry harder. I’ve now spent a solid seven hours on this thing – and I’m fucked. In order to fix it RIGHT, I will have to take apart the entire thing and start over. It’s doable. It really is. BUT oh my god. G thinks that we can use glue to attach the track. Some super duper gorilla glue that works on wood and metal and it won’t be that big of a deal – because it’s not like we’ll be opening the drawers all the time. We can be delicate. What do you think. Will that work?
Colassal Blunder!
Please tell me it will work. The thought of taking this thing apart and put
ting it back together makes me very, very sad.
The morning after.
And to make matters worse, I moved all the crap from one side of the bedroom to other so I could build this thing and in the process my Olympic knitting – yes – it’s still here – I knit three rounds the other day – somehow got tangled up and I spent the next 45 minutes untangling a ball of navy blue yarn at 12:30 AM. And this morning my hands are swollen and killing me and my wrists hurt and my arms hurt. I’m here to tell you – there’s LOTS of crying in the Olympics.
ETA: Now my picture host is off line. So you can’t even see my pain and misery. Fuck it. I’m going back to bed.
Taking Back My House: Part 3,851
February 15, 2006 By
Guess where I was all morning?
I dropped G off at the train – I didn’t even have knitting or water with me – and decided I needed to go to Ikea. And since I was already out of the house, I might as well go now. I called Jen and she was up for it, so Jen, Xavi and I all headed out to Sweden for the day. My intention was baskets. The house is still a mess and it’s driving me crazy, but it’s really hard to clean up when you don’t have anywhere to put anything. My closet has about as many bins as it can hold and I figured some pretty baskets in the living room would be good for holding fiber near the spinning wheel. But I ended up with this:
It’s MY VERY OWN YARN CABINET!!! It will be perfect in the bedroom, right under the Dali print and I can put yarn in it and notions and fiber and I can finally get the crap off the floor. Georgie doesn’t know, so shhhh! He’s out tonight for work, so I’m hoping I can get it all built and filled with crap before he gets home. He’ll be so happy I’m finally cleaning up! I also got a nice basket, and a new lamp for the cabinet. Okey dokey! I better get building!
