Oddities of moving

A few things that I have discovered in moving:

I have too much scotch tape. I understand why this has happened. Whenever I go to wrap a present or something, I invariably cannot find my tape and I have to buy new tape. So I understand why I have more scotch tape than I could possibly use in my life.

I have about a dozen sets of tweezers. Unlike the scotch tape, I don't know where these all came from. I don't use tweezers -- I get my eyebrows waxed. I don't buy tweezers -- or at least I don't ever remember buying tweezers. And yet, there they were. In my medicine cabinet, the drawer of my night-table, one in my sock drawer. I don't know who is hiding tweezers among my possessions, but I don't particularly appreciate it.

And other than that, my big problem is that I just have too much stuff and not enough motivation. I feel like I'm not going to get everything done before Thursday, when the moving people are coming... I am definitely taking Thursday off so I can be here when they move us -- I may have to take Wednesday off, too, if I can't get everything done tomorrow. It's a little intimidating. I mostly worked all day today and got through a lot of crap. I'm taking a little break to watch the Penn State/Ohio State football game (Go Nittany Lions). And then tomorrow, I have to really do the rest of it.

What I Have Learned From Moving: A List in Three Acts

Prelude: The packing began in earnest today. The countdown is 13 days until I have to be completely ready to move.

Act I: Morning

• I have too many papers.
• I have too many books.
• I have too many candles.
  
• I have too much yarn.

Act II: Noon

• I have too many pictures.
• I have too many clothes.
• I have too many pillows (odd, right?)
• I have too much yarn.
  

Act III: Night

• I have too many shoes.
• I have too many dishes.
  
• I have too many CDs
  
• I have too much yarn.

Epilogue: In my next life, I want to be a minimalist. And only to buy the yarn I'm going to use.

New Digs

I put a deposit down on a new place to live today. It's great. I think it will be a really good place for me. It was time for me to leave this apartment, and the new one is in Hoboken. The good news is that it is about a half a mile from the PATH and the better/more dangerous news is that it is about half a mile from Patricia's Yarns. Hopefully, I can go and get lots of ideas for working down my stash before I go and spend lots of money on new yarn. But I'm excited about living in Hoboken. For many people from my area, it is sort of the pinnacle of destinations before you buy a house. It's where all of the bars are, where all of the young people are, it's not NYC (which turns a lot of people off) and it's close to public transportation. So we shall see. All I know is that I am hoping that everything goes smoothly and that I can pack up all of my garbage. I'm trying to throw away as much as I can and get rid of whatever I can...

Falling off the Face of the Earth

Oh, I had no idea it had been so long since I last posted. Whoops. Life is what happens when you're making other plans, right?

I started taking a baby sweater class with Patricia at Patricia's Yarns. During one session, these two women walked by and we overheard one of them say, "I'd like to take classes there but they're so expensive." Patricia and I had a good laugh over that one. For the three sessions, Patricia's class was $45. At three sessions, an hour and a half per session, that's $10 an hour. Minimum wage in NJ is $7.15 an hour. Yeah. She's barely breaking even on these classes! And I've learned a few new techniques that I can take into other projects, and I'm almost finished with the baby jacket (pictures soon).

I'm also making a shawl. I was looking for something fast and easy to remember. I started making one but it was much too difficult to remember how to do. But then I found the Crescendo Shawl, http://www.freevintageknitting.com/shawls/crescendo-shawl-pattern.html which I like because it is easy (cables on rows 3 & 7 but the rest is just knit and purl) and I don't have to keep looking at a pattern. As long as I remember to knit 2 before and after the cables on the 3rd row and knit 5 before and after the cables on the 7th row, I'm good. And I messed up on one row (I didn't discover it until much later) but you can't actually see it unless you know what to look for (I've asked non-knitting friends to find the mistake row and they couldn't). So I think I'm leaving it rather than knitting all the way back.

ScrapGhan, or The Garrett, reincarnated

I started another "Garrett." In some circles this afghan is called a scrapghan. Which is cute. But in my world, it will always be the Garrett. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but it's a good way to work down the stash. There were a few balls, colors, etc. which were just too small to make it worth selling. And I started this before I knew that I had to sell all of my stash, so maybe some of it would have been worth selling.

But I'm finding that evidently, people don't want my yarn as much as I would have liked them to have wanted my yarn. Although I've raised about $100, it is nowhere near the $2000 that I need by the end of the month. Some friends have said that they would all kind of chip in and help me scrape the money together, and I will have to do that and pay them back as I get my paychecks. It's not how I wanted to progress, not how I wanted to enter my new job, but I suppose it is what it is... Not much I can do about it now.

Back to the Garrett Scrapghan, though. I may be donating it somewhere if I can find a good place, someone who will appreciate it. I may see how I feel about it when I'm done. Right now, I can't imagine it having a home in my home.

Sold some more yarn...

I am putting the thermometer on the right side of the blog, and will keep a running total for it there.

I'm not deducting my shipping costs, though to be truly accurate, I really should. It's too much math, though. As my law school friends all know me to say, "I went to law school because there was no math on the LSAT." So, you know, it will have to be an approximate.

Edited by a Moderator

Whoops. I got edited by the moderator of the Destashing group on Ravelry for saying that in addition to trying to sell my stash, I would also welcome any donations. Apparently, many people complained that I had put the donation part on. Who knew? I, of course, thanked her for her moderating, because I understand that one needs to keep the groups orderly and serving the purposes for which they were created, but I looked at the group's main page, and it says *nothing* about donations in any way. I am pretty good at reading into things, but I can't tell from that main page what would upset people enough to complain, or how putting the donation part would go against what the group was created to do.

In con law parlance, we would call that vague and overbroad. It regulates speech that the individual has no way of knowing would be regulated. I don't have a problem with a group being against a particular action. But please, let us know what that action is! Or give us some hint, at least.

Oh well. In any case, to keep the donation button present on the blog as I post more, I have made it a button on the right. Everything is very much appreciated.

Apartment Woes

Okay, so my landlord tried to stick us with a 57% increase on our rent. We went to court, claiming that it was unconscionable, and not only did the judge think that 57% was an okay percentage to raise the rent, he also ruled that we have to pay the additional rent for the time when the case was pending. We're appealing the decision, but long story short, I need to come up with almost $2,000 by the end of August. To that end, I am selling a whole bunch of my yarn on Ravelry (if you are interested and don't have a Ravelry account, let me know, I can send you pictures and prices directly).

I've also set up a "donate" button if anyone feels so inclined to help with my plight.

And a thermometer to keep track of my progress.

Free fundraising thermometer

No Knitting is Not Good Knitting

Yeah. So the bar ended last week, and I have puttered around with the knitting and haven't really done much of anything. I'm working on my stash-gahan, modeled after the "Garrett" blanket, but with worsted weight yarn. Maybe tomorrow I'll take pictures of it, and post them.

I wanted to make the Phoenix shawl from Ravelry, and I bought the pattern and some of the yarn, but I seem to be having some trouble with it, so I think it may have to wait until September when I can go into Patricia's Yarns on a some-what regular basis and ask for her help with it as I progress.

And my list of things that other people make keep growing. I don't know how, but I manage to get very sucked into making things for other people all the time... And just because I was doing minimal knitting doesn't mean that people weren't asking for things. Oh well. I guess it just means I should get off my tuchus and start really knitting again.

randomized photographs

I saw this on Yberry's blog, and I thought it was a really cute idea.

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

This is mine:
1. San Michele di Pagana, 2. Cookie, Anyone, 3. Ha'penny Bridge, 4. double and supernumerary rainbows, 5. Dwayne Johnson, 6. Tossed Cookies, 7. FIRE SHOT, 8. Apple Pie, 9. Joy of life, 10. inspiration..., 11. Another stick in the wall..., 12. Kiss