vanity sizing is stupid.

nice socks, hot stuff.

i have been eyeing the Bike Lane Dress at anthro since it hit the rack about a month ago.  on sunday i finally tried it on with no intention of buying it. off-white is not a great color for me, but if it surprised me and looked good, come sale time it may have been game on!!

as adorable as the bicycle print is, i couldn't wear this is i wanted to.  in the picture i am wearing the size 2.  notice the broken contortionist arm?  yeah, that is me holding in 3-4" of dress.  it fell off if i let go.

from the reviews on the anthro site, it appears even the 0 would be too big for we under-endowed ladies.

and to this i say--get real anthro!!!  this vanity sizing thing is getting to be absurd.  i am not the smallest person i know by any stretch f the imagination, and somehow you made this dress too big for me?  i know vanity sizing is part of your overall pricing strategy.  we will pay more to feel good about the number on the tag, but this is getting obnoxious.

you are getting to be as bad as old navy with the silly XXS, XXXS and 00 or 000!!

easter is late this year

April 24th.
yep, that is the day these eggs are supposed to be consumed.  that is 15 weeks from now.  I will have completed an entire quarter teaching (which does not even start until next Monday, mind you), gone on break, and come back to a new quarter before this candy is meant to be eaten.

and yet they are in my local CVS right this second having an identity crisis.

what you can't see in this picture is that I am standing in front of a rack of valentine's day candy and behind the shelf of eggs and peeps there is a display of christmas stuff CVS is still trying to clearance out.

people long to be young.  not me.  if i were a kid today i would be baffled.

ooh, ooh, meeee!!!

i recently got dental insurance.

i was reading over the coverage plan and it struck me that dental insurance is cheap, and for the most part it works really well compared to its big sister health insurance.

all preventative care is covered 100%. it is once you start needing stuff fixed that they drop it to 80% and when you start really screwing up* that they only cover 50%.

this whole "pay for preventative care" angle makes a lot more sense to me than the "pay per service" or the "take this prescription and go away, that will be $50 please" models for health "care".

just saying.

*"screwing up" is a relative term. i speak from the experience of having teeth replaced after an accident.

enough.

i have remained silent to almost everyone around me about the health care debate, but i have finally heard idiocy that trumps all other idiocy in my mind. this trumps "death panels" for me (in part because i put enough faith my my fellow Americans that they are smart enough to realize they are being lied to about "death panels") because of the blinders one must be wearing to make such an idiotic statement.

a heard on the radio a woman say she wanted congress to vote down the insurance reform provision that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing condition. her argument (paraphrased)...

"this is like letting people go without car insurance and then be guaranteed coverage AFTER they have been in an accident."

no it isn't, you moron.
as much as i want no one to experience a health problem, i would find it amusing to see this person have to call on their current coverage for a serious illness and then switch jobs and try to switch insurance with that job. she would probably be denied new coverage (or only offered coverage with exorbitant premiums and/or deductibles) under the current system due to pre-existing condition.

my money is on this person quickly switching her tune if she were diagnosed with cancer or a chronic condition like MS and found herself unable to get new coverage in the event of job switch or being dropped by her current company. go talk to the woman who was dropped from her insurance the same week she was supposed to undergo a double mastectomy because she "failed to report" a pre-existing condition. what was that condition she failed to report? acne. she was being treated by a dermatologist for acne.

i can only assume that the naysayer has never been sick a day of her life and no one in her family or friend group has ever had cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a chronic condition like MS. i wish i had this person's life. (i'm almost 30 years old and still have acne. i hope i don't get breast cancer!)

health insurance is not the same as car insurance. take off the blinders.


okay! done with the anger.
back to the regularly scheduled yarn.

bzzzz! bzzzZZzzZz!

i have been busy bee. right now i am in ohio visiting with my cousin and her family. (arrived wednesday night) next stop, my parents' place for a bit. then rW arrives and we spend the 4th of july all together.

this means that excluding the backlog, no new garden news, and there will be none until i return to the east coast. i am knitting on the road, but some of my projects are secret projects! news on the knitting front later.

Day Twenty-Seven
saturday. in which we alternate.

it rains. no wait! the sun shines! i am sure the garden is glad for the latter, but the former is doing it no good. the soil in my containers has not been 100% dry since... oh... maybe Day 3.

to make matter worse, rW and i planned to pick sweet cherries today, and the weather is making that impossible. this is very disappointing because the cherries are only on the tree for a bout week, so you have to get them while they are hot!

aide from the rain, i caged my cucumber plants last night. cukes an get very viney and grow all over the place. i am training mine to grow up! we'll see how the little tendrils of vine do latching on to the cage.

Day Twenty-Eight
sunday. in which we finally have sun.

finally, no rain. just sun, and cage news!

cucumbers grow quickly, and mine have taken to the cages right away. little vine tendrils quickly lashed themselves to the cage structure and curled on tight. i hope the plant take well to this. the lowest layer of leaves has turned to a yellow color, which is a bad sign in my book. same this happened to my melons' leaves, however, and they are hanging in okay.

Day Twenty-Nine
monday. glamour shots

i decided you needed some glamour shots of peppers. i have some forming on the jalapeno, and some impressive ones on the Early Big Bell.

i am excited about the EBB because they are supposed to get HUGE! (8" peppers!) i have high hopes that one of the later rounds of peppers from the plant will be enough to allow me to make red pepper spread. yum yum.

right now the peppers are smallish (2" range) and still green. they are supposed to turn red when they are mature and ready to be picked.

rW speculates that it will be shortly after we return from the trip. i think it will be longer. maybe i am a pessimist, but this whole gardening thing has been a very slow row to hoe.

Day Thirty
tuesday. vines are funny.

the vines n the cucumber plants are scrambling to be the #1 vine on the cage. they are very funny because they lash together in clumps, and some of them are "strangling" the plant as they tie branches of it down to the cage.

they grow so quickly, inches over a span of a few hours--i wish i could watch them and see it happen!

Day Thirty One.
wednesday. RIP.

drat.
i lost a pepper in progress.

i was looking at the jalapeno, and he seemed funny. one of the connector branches was getting a bit yellow. i reached to see the pepper better and it fell off in my hand. and he is still tiny. boo.

he he was in his glory before the drop... (pepper in the background.)

because i never meme

i saw this one over at wendyknits and it amused me because like wendy, i was given a name that starts with a letter you hate to get stuck with when playing Scrabble.

Use the first letter of your name to find a word for each of the following:

Your Name - Yvette
Four letter word - yoke
Boy name - Yves
Girl name - Yolanda
Occupation - yeoman*
Color - yellow
Beverage - Yoo-hoo
Something found in a bathroom - yarn, knit into two bathmats
A Place - Yugoslavia, the former
Reason for being late - youthful shenanigans
Food - yogurt.
Something you shout - Yippie!

* i love "yeoman" because it ties back to my name. it has a lot of meanings through time, but my favourite is the archers. yeoman archers were english war archers who used longbows made of yew trees. the continent picked up this technology and the name "Yves" means "archer" from the teutonic for "yew". Yvette is the feminine of "Yves". fun. with arrows!

i now understand the 1980s

whenever i wear hair combs, the first one always goes in very well and looks great the 2nd is an absurd s.o.b. of a hair ornament.

i now see the brilliance of those ladies in the 1980s who wore one in just one side and made it a trend.

i salute you.

a bad sign

i was thinking to myself yesterday as i washed my hair...

"hm... when did i last shower?"

scrub. scrub.

"sunday. no, no... wait... saturday night. no. saturday. morning. 8am. uuuuuggghhhh...."


it is going to be a long week.

and one washington moment

living in the DC area can be tiresome.
here the national news is the local news, and we hear about every little political detail of both parties in all branches. most of the time, i like being overly informed, but i have one complaint.

enough with Tsars!

Intelligence Tsar.
Auto Tsar.
Regulation Tsar.

enough!
enough!
enough!

can't we bring back "Director"? how about "Supervisor"? "Tsar" seems so mustache-twirling, metal-helmet-wearing, spear-carrying... oh, and 19th century.

enough.

sew confused!

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eww.

hi! i am a totally humiliated Interweave Knits model!

the preview for the winter issue of Interweave Knits is out, and i am unimpressed.

1. most of these sweaters make the skinny mini models look fat. not fat, i guess.... the sweaters are not adding fat rolls but it does make them look thick and/or chunky. that is an adjective i want to apply to peanut butter or soup, not sweaters.

2. if the sweaters are not fat-looking, the photos are! ew. ew. ew. who publishes in a magazine a picture cropped in the least flattering way possible? that makes me want to knit Fatty McGee sweaters. yeah.

3. colorwork accessories. ugly ones at that! gross. okay. the poinsetta mittens are cute, but they re a little cheesy.

4. and to be fair, the one man sweater in the issue is very nice. too bad i am not a man.

the first

for the first time ever, i have run out of yarn on a project. moreover, i have run out of yarn on a project on which i should have had enough because...

1. i have the amount the pattern calls for.
2. i am getting gauge.
3. um. this never happens to me.

this almost happened with the sweater i made my father. according to the book, i needed 7 skeins, i bought 9. i used all but 4 yards of the last skein. nice.

but at least i had what i needed that time, and more importantly i could get more because i bought the yarn where i work. is that the case this time? no way. this is bright red vintage angora i bought in ohio at the yarn shop my mum and i only go to because well... it is there. and there may be something interesting.

like angora.
the kind i only need 4 more yards of to finish a project. gah.

good news: my mum found it, and when i go visit for turkey day, i will be able to finish my project.

another thing

i have been sent public and private comments about how i handled my ear infection. specifically how i handled in incorrectly.

yes, i realize there are ear, nose, and throat doctors in the world. i also realize they handle these things much better than a GP, an urgent care center, or Minute Clinic ever could. i even went to one the last time i had a throat in infection that kept me in bed for 5 days.

but specialists cost a lot of money.

health care in general costs a lot of money. the kind of health insurance i qualify for as a "young" single female in the state of maryland can be described as either "under insurance" or "$800 out of pocket per month".

to put that figure in perspective, i currently spend as much combined on my car insurance, student loan repayment, and rent every month.

well, some insurance is better than no insurance right? not really. when i had health insurance, i could never find someone who was qualified to call themself a doctor who would actually see me. i didn't have expensive enough insurance to be seen by someone fancy and reputable.

when i went to the ENT, 100% was out of pocket, even though i had insurance.

now, without it, i am the pariah in the corner at urgent care.

i try not to get political or turn my blog into a PSA, but this gets my goat. the faceless uninsured are not just the homeless black children living in the inner city you can readily conjure up in your head when you watch the evening news.

it is also me.
a white woman living in a small hippie town next to the big city. someone with a car, a roof over her head, her own business, a job at another small business, and a terminal graduate degree.

put that in your pipe and smoke it.

argh!

i HATE our ftp server.

i am trying to write a bunch of blog posts for the store blog and schedule them to roll out over the next week or so.... i want to get this done before i go into tech so that it can 1. get paid. and 2. not have to worry about the blog while am up to my eyeballs in my "real" job.

boo.

boo on images and ftp servers!

beet dis... RAK!

i joined the Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) group on ravelry. in the group forum you post a wish list and other people post a wish list and if you can fulfill a wish, you do. they can be knitting related and non.

my non knitting related wish was for people to send me beet recipes, which they have!

i told rW about this and he sent me a RAK as well. sort of.

grumblelacegrumblegrumble

small lace update.

i made it 2.5" into the center chart on the christening shawl this weekend. yay!

today, however, i decided to knit this morning because i got up a little early. i gave myself a certain amount of time to allot to my lace, and i used it all. but made only one row of progress.

when i looked at the project this morning, i thought about sticking in a new lifeline (prompted by rW wondering last night when i would put in another) but then i got cocky and decided not to for a few more rows. bad move.

i messed up the side frame charts. i knit the same row twice and didn't notice until i had already purled back the next row and started a new knit row. without a life line, i could not simply rip. i had to tink* back two whole lace rows of 150+ stitches. i had just enough time left in my allotment to reknit one row.

gah.


*tink = knit spelled backwards. or "unknitting". there. a knitting term f the day for the civilians.

ps!!!

i finished the Gathered Pullover.

and...

this is the ugliest piece of jewelry i have ever seen.

my shame.

this is all knitting blah blah blah. (fyi for my non-kitting readers.)


i currently have an obscene number of UFOs. un. finished. objects. most of them are playing for the 50% team. boo on that.

i have decided that i need to take a few down before i 1. do any more lizard ridge squares. 2. start the other parts of my cousins' baby gifts or 3. start carving out serious shawl time. i like knitting the shawl, and it has a (distant) deadline, but some of these old friends need to come off the books.

i worked on the Gathered Pullover in front of a movie the other night. each round is 152 boring stitches right now and i have not quiet caught up to where i had to tear it all out and start over. reknitting stocking stitch in the round is not as fun as i wish it was. this will get better once i pass the "tear out" mark and even better once i can work the cable motif.

when i got too bored with the sweater, i finished the movie up by knitting on my cashmere scarf. it is also boring, but i wanted something simple to show off the cashmere. so, yeah. dull. dull. dull. BUT! inspired by how quickly it was coming together, i managed to knit through the 3rd of 4 balls of yarn tonight. it was helped by the fact that i switched from metal to birch needles... the metal was almost too slick for my cashmere, and the birch sped me up a bit.

i joined in some cashmere left over from a 5th ball i knit into a tiny project instead of breaking into the 4th intact ball. in is probably only about 30 yards. if i had waited to use my partial at the end, i could see myself deciding to bind off after ball 4 and never use the partial. discipline! let no cashmere go unknit.

this scarf is on my hit list. as well as the 2nd cabled mitten. (i LOVE the mittens. they are fun to knit and the yarn rocks--Dream in Color "Classy") i will feel much less shame about the pullover or sock once these other two re done. i will also stop feeling like the only color i knit with is green.

(it sort of is.)

BOOM!

yesterday we had very high winds here in the DC area. the theatre i was working in had a series of power surges that screwed with the lights (we were working upstairs by i hear the show that was running downstairs was made rather special by this event) and when i got home there was a surprise waiting for me.


yep.
that is half a pine tree that feel down out of our yard onto the cul-de-sac. picture if from my kitchen on the third floor. the branches hit my neighbor's car. he was fortunate it didn't do much damage. i heard from my other neighbors that what i saw was pretty good because there was significant clean up before i got home.

the hanging wires are just cable lines (so we have no cable. thank you to my neighbors for sharing their wireless with me until we get it fixed.) but the truck you see in the corner of the shot is the power company coming to untangle them from the power lines.

never a dull moment!

i failed to mention...

i can totally change my own flat tire. this happened on valentines day. i went around all day saying "and people wonder how his girl can possibly stay single!?!" when recounting my victory over the steep hill, lousy car jack, and general lameness of flat tires on cold days.