Kiss My Knits!

In today’s bout of awesomeness, Jon Lovitz apparently laid the smackdown on Andy Dick. It seems that Lovitz blames Dick for giving Phil Hartman’s wife cocaine after her ten years of sobriety, thus sending her down the path that killed Phil, who was a dear friend of Lovitz’s. So he was already pissed at Dick, but then Dick rubbed salt in the wound by saying that he had put the “Hartman Hex” on Lovitz, and he would be the next to die. You know, I’m not normally one to advocate violence, but Jeez Louise. If anybody deserved what we here in the South would call “a good whuppin'” it was Andy Dick. In fact, this makes wonder if more of life’s problems could be solved by beating up Andy Dick.

I still miss Phil Hartman. Le sigh.

Today’s second bout of awesomeness is a webcomic which probably everybody already knew about but me, since it’s been going on for more than a year now. It’s “DM of the Rings”, the Lord of the Rings told as a AD&D campaign. So yeah, probably only funny if you’re a gamer geek. Fortunately, that’s me.

In Jayne hat news, I have once again denuded all yarn shops within a 60-mile radius of the proper shade of yellow yarn. (Heh. She said “denude.”) More is on its way from Lorien, an alpaca farm and yarn store in Candler, NC. Their prices are great and the owner has been quite responsive. Thanks for the yarn store tip, ! Brown Sheep will be spinning up more yellow and orange in SIX WEEKS so hopefully at that point my worries will be over again for a while. You’re killing me, Brown Sheep.

I suddenly realized today that I have a week until Simucon, so I need to do all the things I’ve been putting off, like get my tri-annual haircut and take the car in for a tuneup. I’m off to be busy!

It’s the perfect storm of Emily’s interests! Groovy Girl dolls AND Brownies! Damn you, Manhattan Toy! Because I’ve been mailing out badges and such this week, Emily’s taken a renewed interest in Scouts. I still have Scout paperwork to do to prepare for Fall, but at least I don’t have a bunch of little girls all waiting for their cookie badges, which were earned in April. We need to get the troop together this summer at least once for the girls bridging up to Juniors. Emily wants to have them all over to the house. I was thinking a more neutral location, but that’s just me.

Nothing terribly exciting to show, knitting-wise. It’s been all Jayne, all the time. Instead, let’s see another video, shall we?

In 1991 or 1992 (I want to say 1992) I did a contest with WSOC-TV wherein we would show a location from somewhere in our viewing area, and people would have to call in and name the location, and if they were the tenth caller they’d win. The “calling in” portion of the contest was not without its challenges – it was definitely a learning experience for our promotion manager. However, shooting the spots was great fun, since we got to go all over two states shooting landmarks like the Reed Gold Mine. This was one of two winnerspots we did for that contest. We would bring in a group of five winners at a time for economy’s sake. We didn’t do that for winnerspots at WJZY, and what I learned is that doing a good winnerspot is like doing a good DVD commentary – get a decent number of people in the studio at once. They loosen each other up and have more fun, and it shows.

15 years later, I’m not sure I remember this guy’s name. Either Lineburger or Tarlton. Regardless, he was a character, God love him. He came up with that schtick himself. I met the nicest people in that job.

Jayne hats up for: CA, OK, CA.

My husband took my daughter with him to see his folks, because a) it would be unthinkable to visit without the grandchild, and b) I was going crazy. I’ve had a good day. I washed those Tofutsies socks machine-wash warm and hung them to dry, and there was NO pilling. I road-tripped up to Davidson for some much-needed orange yarn and stopped by Summit Coffee for a cuppa joe. I swapped my Season One Buffy DVDs with Turtlegirl76 for her Deadwood Season Three DVDs. Can’t start watching them until the husband gets home, though.

I put on Season Two of Buffy and watched some of those while writing out more Jayne hat notes. I have to finish a hat tonight to stay on schedule – there are a fair number of folks wanting theirs in time for DragonCon and I’m doing my best to accomodate everyone. Since I’ll be at Simucon part of the preceding week, the schedule has to be adhered to.

I also got some QCs and wedding work done for DragonRealms. In working to de-clutter the house, I looked up and realized that I had something pretty large and unnecessary still around. This is the big white board that I used to use to keep track of all the DR weddings. Since we are no longer living in caves and hunting wooly mammoths, the white board has been replaced by various computer spreadsheets. I kind of hate to lose it, just for sentimental reasons.


Speaking of tools, here’s the yarn counter I made last week based on the design from Hello Yarn. Hopefully this will let me measure my kit yarn more precisely – although I’ll still be giving some overage – so I don’t have to raise prices. It’s actually short a component. It needs another silicon bracelet to go around the wheel to help guide the yarn. Right now I have to keep my fingers on one side of the wheel and stop the yarn from falling off. Also, it winds the yarn a little tighter than I’d like, so I wind it twice to take some of the tension off. All part of our quality service!

Note the bracelet I have chosen to use. Very appropriate for a Firefly/feminist operation.

Okay, back to the Jayne mines! Plus, School Hard is up on the Buffy DVDs! Woot!

Yarn: SWTC Tofutsies
Colorway: 722 Stand on Your Own Two Feet
Needles: Two circs in size 0 US (2mm)
Gauge: 9.5 stitches per inch.

These were toe up with a short row heel, my preferred method. Straight stockinette with a k2p2 rib for the leg. My flipper-like feet are 10 inches around, but my ankles are 8 inches around. Because of this, the body of the foot was 72 stitches wide, but I decreased to 64 for the leg. I could probably have done 68 for the foot and still been okay – these are almost too roomy. I still have about half a skein of Tofutsies left over, so I could easily make a pair of ankle socks from the remainder.

I’ve only worn them one day, but so far they seem durable and soft. I’d use this yarn again.

Am going crazy from being home all day as a mom. I love my child, Lord knows I do, but I’m still going a little stir-crazy. Emily’s taking swimming lessons in the afternoon this week and next week, so we’ve got that going, but our early July is pretty light on the summer camp stuff. I need to get more sleep, that’ll help.

I’ve put my 2004 knitting projects into Ravelry. I’ll start on 2005 at some point soon. I am omitting the hundreds of individual Jayne hats in favor of one single Jayne hat project that I’ve listed as ongoing from 2004 to the present.

Speaking of Jayne, I’m almost out of orange and the mill won’t be spinning more for another six weeks. You’re killing me, Brown Sheep, you’re killing me. More road trips are in my future.

The Tofutsies socks were finished tonight! They look good. I’ll post up pics soon. Speaking of posting pics, having to put things up on Ravelry means that I have to put my knitting pics up on flickr. I feel oddly exposed having them all out there.

Am doing Girl Scout paperwork, trying to find a new home for my two rising Juniors and merging with another troop. Also mailing out cookie badges. I have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I’m overlooking something important, but I don’t know what, and something will go wrong this Fall. However, I did speak with the council membership coordinator tonight, and she gave me some info that gives me a place to go to get more in control of things.

Started to spin up the second half of the red fiber, but you know what? After spinning that gorgeous cormo/silk blend, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the red stuff. It was pretty, but just not so much fun to spin. Instead I moved on to the BFL I got from SakinaNeedles. Wow, is that stuff soft. Like buttah. I went to split it, and it fell apart into two perfect little slivers in my hand. Then four, then eight. Easy peasy. I’m still getting the hang of spinning it – I think I need to set my brake a little harder, I’m kind of uneven – but it’s just so soft. Did I mention that it’s soft?


I’m preserving the hard color breaks, so I think it will ply up pretty barber pole-y, but I’m okay with that. This is for fun. I’m going to order more to have for Simucon, since I think this will be fun for newer spinners.

Still recovering from staying up too late a few nights ago after getting the DVD transferred. Maybe I’ll put up another spot tomorrow.

Time for bed. Pics and vids another day.

Hats up for: NC, MO, CA

The third of a series of Next Gen spots. This must have been ’93 or ’94 since that’s when TNG was in its final season. Back in the days before Google, I had to schlep to every library and bookstore in town trying to find a book with a picture of Grant Wood’s American Gothic big enough to scan into the Quantel Paintbox, which back then was like a primitive version of Photoshop. And when I say scan in, I mean lay on a flat surface and photograph with a camera hooked into the machine.

Jeez, I sound like Grandpa Simpson. Of course, we did all wear onions on our belts, because that was the fashion.

The music was Michelle Shocked doing Arkansas Traveler.

My husband and I have been trying to de-clutter our lives, and one way we’re doing this is by getting rid of video tapes. However, some tapes we don’t want to get rid of, such as my old resume reels. Unfortunately, my master tapes are on MII, a format that never really came into its own in commercial use. It’s like the Beta of TV stations. Which is ironic, because Beta was industry standard when I was there. Also like Beta, MII was superior to the format which did come into wide use. Blu-Ray, pay attention! Never neglect marketing!

We were moving to a digital playback system when I left in ’99. I didn’t bother to put my stuff on a more easily accessible format because it never in a million years occurred to me that I wouldn’t be returning. It was simply an impossibility. Funny where life takes you, eh?

However, I did occasionally dup some stuff to VHS to bring home and review, and I did have my friend and former boss dub a few things to a tape for me after I left. Nice of him to do. So now, I’ve dumped a lot of my output onto the hard drive of our spiffy new recorder and made one master DVD. I’ll be making another copy for safekeeping.

From college, it’s got the crappy tape transfer of the B&W student film I edited, plus the Gunsmoke editing project every film student has had to do since the 50’s, plus a weird student video. Weird student videos are mandatory in college.

Professionally, there’s my intern work at WSOC-TV, and the stuff I did after I got hired as a producer there (hello, salary!). It’s got my editing from NBC News Channel, when I was freelancing overnights. It’s got the early stuff I did for WJZY, and my Hawaii 5-0 spot that got an Addy. There are a few later spots done after the advent of Photoshop and AfterEffects, when I could actually, you know, ADD GRAPHICS to my spots. I look at most of my stuff now and think “man, that would be so much better with graphics” but you can only do what you have the tools to do.

There are also a few production oddities that might appeal to geeks, like the slates for ST:TNG and DS9 from the original feeds, with Michael Dorn or Rene Aberjonois identifying the audio channels. There are also some production track only versions of the promos, which are great for pulling clean dialogue and effects out of. I’d love to send those to someone who would appreciate them, but I’m sure Paramount would put the smackdown on me for YouTubing them.

Anyway, I’m hoping to actually put up a few videos of what I did in the old days. It’s not exactly Gone with the Wind, but it’s not terrible TV either. Since rediscovering these, I keep having dreams that I’ve gone back to work in TV. They’re always good dreams. Well, we’ve already seen that life takes you where you don’t expect to go, so who knows what the future holds?

Elizabeth Taylor

Pattern: Basic doll, panties, pants, and sweater from “Toys to Knit” by Tracy Chapman
Yarn: Dale Baby Ull for body, Mission Falls 1824 wool for pants, Lion Brand Cottonease for shirt.
Needles: #2 (2.75mm) for doll and panties, #7 (4.5mm) for outerwear
Gauge: 7 sts per inch for doll held single, didn’t check for outerwear.

Taylor, right, is the completed companion to Elizabeth, left. In spite of how it looks, they are the same size. Taylor’s head might be just a smidge bigger. I blogged extensively about my troubles with Elizabeth. Again, the pants would have been too long with the full 50 rows called for, so I did 42. Also, after seeing how much trouble Elizabeth has with keeping her trousers up, I only cast on 23 instead of 25. The panty pattern, at least, works like a charm.

There was a different shirt for Taylor, made out of blue Lion Brand Cottonease. This pattern had its own set of issues. Why would you call for decreases along the sleeves of a sweater for a doll? They’re not real person arms. They’re little sausages. They don’t taper. Instead of casting on 22 and decreasing to 14, I cast on 20 and did one decrease to 18 after eight stitches on the theory that it might make it a little easier to stuff the arms into the armholes. It worked fine. Just before I started the sweater, Emily asked for a picture on it, a heart. Turtlegirl76 was gracious enough to share some red Cottonease for that. I had to buy a skein of Baby Ull for the doll itself, but the yarn for the pants and main body of the shirt came out of my stash.

We chose Taylor’s name the same way we did Elizabeth’s, by going to a baby name site and perusing a list of the most popular girl names. She has trouble coming up with stuff from her own head, but having a list like that, she had no trouble selecting exactly the right name.

Seeing this picture makes me wonder if this was what was in her head when she bought that issue of Betty and Veronica yesterday. Hopefully they’ll be a good influence on each other, although with a combination name like “Elizabeth Taylor” I kind of doubt it. Well, Emily’s happy and that’s all that matters.

Comics, multicolored food, and knitting.

I have things to write – progress on the doll including a YouTube demo on doll hair, Emily’s and my adventure uptown riding the bus today, my horror of Girl Scout paperwork – but I’m a bit too tired.

Instead, I’ll just say that I got my Ravelry invite today (yay!) and my username is Tvini. I’ve been getting http://www.wearwithstyle.com hits from the Jayne hat pattern that’s up there, so it’s nice to be able to actually, you know, see what’s there.

If you’re on Ravelry, friend me at will!