Kiss My Knits!

I got a call back from my local yarn store, Charlotte Yarn, who had placed the order for the orange cones for me. Apparently there was a mixup with the order. When I ordered the orange, the store ordered the orange with the mill, and they have a written record of that, but the mill wrote down yellow. So when I got two big cones of yellow a couple of weeks ago, I assumed that since it was my correct yellow shade, it was from an earlier order, and the orange would still be forthcoming.

Wrong! The mill shipped the incorrect color, and – here’s the kicker – they won’t be spinning more of the orange for three months. Cue anguished screaming here.

Well, God bless Remy at Charlotte Yarn, after we talked about how I had 25 orders in line and the four skeins I was picking up in Davidson was just not going to cut it, she got back on the horn to the mill. They’re shipping 16 skeins and pricing them at the same level as they would for a mondo cone. Yay!

A terrible misunderstanding, but thanks to Remy’s persistence and the mill’s willingness to fix their mistake, things are back on track. I’d still rather have the cones, but under the circumstances, I’m happy with the resolution. I went from “crap, I’m going to have to start turning orders away, and doing a lot of legwork to fill the ones I’ve got” to “yay! Jayne hats for everyone!” in the space of about a half hour this morning.

Unfortunately, this all happened at the same time as a meeting with a potential new speech therapist for my daughter, and it drove thoughts of that meeting right out of my head. I’ve left a very apologetic message for the lady. I have a feeling I’m going to be on my cell phone a lot today.

But you know what? I like crisis mode. I really function well with the extra adrenalin. I miss that about TV. I don’t like drama in my personal life, but a little crisis now and then keeps the old blood pumping.

And NOW it’s time to head up to Davidson!

This morning I logged into Dragonrealms to document a new kind of flower that had been added, and got to poking around Theren. I hadn’t been to Gealeranendae College before, so I hadn’t seen the blackboard with the notes on how to create a gerbil launcher. I love finding those little touches that you really have to look for.

On the Jayne hat front, I would have sworn that I had two more large cones of orange yarn, but I do not. I’ve put a call in to my supplier to find out when my next order will arrive. It’s always tough to tell, since basically I have to wait for the mill to spin more of that color, and they only do that every six weeks or so. I have enough to fill my kit orders, but nonetheless, I’m probably going to be trekking up to Davidson to snag a couple of individual skeins as a safety net. It’s not an issue with finished hats right now, since I’ve got a few non-Jayne hat orders currently at #1 in the queue.

When I started this, I never thought I’d be in a position where I’d get nervous if I was down to less than a thousand yards of any given color left, but by my rough estimate I’ve used about 70,000 yards of yarn on the Jaynes, or about 40 miles if you want to think about it that way. Atsa lotta naked sheep.

I’m off to eat breakfast and hit the road!

Apparently my courage in battling the monstera has inspired illiane to present me with some “yummy” “goodness” from Malaysia. illiane said that she thought the rambutan was “rude-looking,” which just shows you what a gutter mind she has. I’ll tell you this – no matter how sweet and delicious they are purported to be, I will not be opening the can of alien balls without full hazmat gear. Take “alien balls” how you will. I think we all know how illiane will be taking it.

I’ll report back when I sample these. Until then, they’ll be safely stored in a lead-lined bunker in the back yard.


Whipped up another little something, which I cannot show you in its finished form because it is a gift. These are the bits of it, though. I just need to put a finishing touch on it, then it’s off to its destination.

There are actually a fair number of non-Jayne items in the queue right now, which is always fun. I ran a reproduction of a felted purse past the client who asked for it, and she was very pleased, although it needs to be a hair wider. I need to knock another one or two of those out for her – she’s gifting her sisters with them for Christmas. There are a couple of Jayne hats that need to be ready by Flanvention II, but aside from that, most stuff is for Christmas. At this point, it’s too late to order a finished hat and have it guaranteed by the holidays. Kits are no problem, but if you’re not already in line for a knitted item, it may be January.


For Halloween, Emily said all season that she did NOT want a pumpkin. Next year, she’d want a pumpkin but definitely not this year. No sir, no pumpkin for her. Until 3pm on Halloween day. Great.

So we went to two grocery stores with no luck, then I thought I’d try a pumpkin stand I knew, and they had a few left. A few small, lumpy pumpkins. Emily quickly pointed to what we shall not call the worst, but instead “the one with the most character.” If there was a Halloween equivalent to the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, this was it. It was two dollars, but the guy took pity on us and only charged us a buck. We were very grateful.

We took it back home, and because I am one of Those Moms who sucks the fun out of everything, I had Emily draw me a picture of how she wanted the pumpkin to look so that she could work those fine motor skills. Actually, it was still fun, since it was part of the process of carving. “Triangle eyes, circle nose, squiggle mouth.” I’d never done squiggle before, but I gave it a shot. It may not be art, but it is, as my father would say, “good enough for newspaper work.”

Behold! The tiniest pumpkin! If ever the Great Pumpkin were going to visit a house instead of a pumpkin patch, he would surely choose ours, as our pumpkin was the most sincere in the neighborhood. The opening was barely big enough to fit a little tea candle inside.

I leave you with this belated image of Halloween. May your candy last exactly as long as you want it to.

It’s the weirdest thing. Sometimes I’ll get a sudden geographical cluster of orders. After receiving, say, three orders in a week from the Toronto area, I’ll ask one of the clients if there’s something going on up there. Maybe there’s a meeting, or a showing, or some kind of convention?

There never is. It’s just kind of a fluke – as if all of a sudden, for instance, Australia just woke up all Browncoaty. Weird.

I’m about to meet the edge of what I’d feel comfortable guaranteeing by Christmas. I like to allow for “hit by a bus” time, in case something happens to me, so I pad in extra time when I’m giving my knitting estimates. I would so much rather have someone pleasantly surprised by getting their hat early than have someone be disappointed for the holidays.

Knits up next for NC, NC, and AK. That’s Alaska, not Arkansas, if you’re furrowing your brow over the abbreviation.

Had a gift certificate, so I got Newsradio Season 4 on DVD. It’s the last season with Phil Hartman, and includes some of my favorite bits, as when Mr. James’ flop of a business book (Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer) was translated into Japanese (Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler) and became a bestseller there. So he had it translated back into English and gave a reading.

Good times, good times.

Click For Summer Fun, Star Trekkin’, and Miscellaneous Knitting.

Dude.

We have got to do that again next year.

That was TEH AWESOME.

A guy who lives out west ordered a Jayne hat from me this Spring, only to have it turned back TWICE. The first time, it actually was apparently delivered, but for some unknown reason it was returned to me, heavily mangled. After talking with him to be sure the address was correct, I mailed it out to him again last Thursday. It just showed back up on my doorstep, only lightly mangled, but missing the address label. If it hadn’t had a little “custom made for ____” label tucked inside, I wouldn’t even have known which hat it was. The delivery confirmation number shows that it never even made it out of Charlotte this time.

WTF?? I’m fairly certain that the original Jayne hat, travelling across the vast reaches of space, didn’t have this kind of trouble getting to Jayne. What’s a guy gotta do get a cunning hat around here? I’m leaning towards space monkeys being involved somehow.

I’m shipping it again, priority. Un-freaking-believable.


In other news, we’ve got our sitter lined up for the Serenity screening in Charlotte tonight. The Observer ran a blurb on it yesterday, and I hear through the grapevine that at least 50 tickets have been sold, meaning the screening broke even a few days ago and is now making money for its charity, Equality Now. I can’t be there to help with the set up, so I hope the people doing it remember little details like to bring extra one dollar bills for change. I’m not sure they can process credit cards at the site.

Some folks are coming down from Raleigh for this. I anticipate a good time had by all – even you, !

So for some reason, the Jayne hat became very popular over at http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/ . Apparently it’s all the rage to give your icon a Jayne hat. My husband brews beer and is an avid member of the forum, so when a member of the Brewing Network flew in from Australia for a big beer event, he asked if I’d make one and ship it to the guy here in the states.

Well, the hat got passed around all night to everyone at the event, and poor Oz (original name for an Aussie, eh?) didn’t get it back. It’s apparently now the Official Homebrew Network Jayne Hat, and they’re comparing it to the Stanley Cup – one of a kind, held in high esteem, and very special. The powers that be are holding a contest, and the person who shows up at the next event and has the best idea of where to take the hat and photograph it will be awarded the hat. Then they’ll pass it along to the next person with a good idea, and so on. They hope it will travel around the world.

I find this interesting because many of these people have never even seen Firefly – it’s just “a Lufah hat” after the first guy to post a pic of himself in one. Yet somehow, the magic of Jayne’s unbelievable hat has taken hold of another fringe group of lunatics. I’ll be very interested to see the pics of the places that it goes.

Behold the stupidest, fattest, loudest, laziest cat in existence. This is Nerys, named in a contest on my husband’s old computer bulletin board, back before there was this newfangled intermanet thingie. Ironically, we originally got her to be sure another of our cats got enough exercise. You can see how well that worked out.

Has she lifted one fat-sheathed muscle to chase the mouse? No. She has not. And yet, if our old cat Purr-Zha were still around, this wouldn’t be an issue. OId, blind, toothless, diabetic, arthritic, and cancer-ridden, he would still have taken out this mouse with one swipe of his paw. Nerys, on the other hand, can’t even reach her own butt. Man, did we get the short end of the cat deal.

The Koigu is swatching up at 6 stitches per inch on a #3 needle, which would have been too tight, so it’s just as well I’m being thorough and checking the math now. I’m going with a WendyKnits pattern, which looks like it’ll work just fine.
(ETA 7-27-06 I wound up getting 6.25 stitches per inch on the final product.)

The hubby leaves for Raleigh in about 15 minutes. Fortunately, my daughter’s summer camp, which I thought was only for a few days, will run all week in the morning. Yay! I can still have my morning Jayne-hat knitting time!

And finally, of interest only to Firefly fans, an actual sign that was spotted in South Charlotte. Photographer Matt Wiggins titled it best:

When Bounty Hunting Doesn’t Work Out . . .

Geekiest. Charts. Ever.

Yesterday my daughter and I were poking around outside, and found some pillbugs. She picked one up and took it to the front door and said, “It can live with me!” So we brought it in and put it in her little bug habitat.

She’s done this with pillbugs before. The part that cracks me up is that she named her pillbug “Cat.”

“Cat” was joined by several more pillbugs, one of which she forcefully tried to unroll, and then handed the two halves to me and said, “this one’s broken.” She knows not to do that now. I’m about to go set the survivors free. She’s been talking about wanting a puppy (note, she would hate this in real life) or a hermit crab and maybe a fish. Given the hazards of being one of her pets, I think we’ll stick with the pillbugs for now.

Going to get my hair cut today. It’s doing that floopy wings thing that it does on the sides when I let it go too long.

I’m ahead on Jayne orders. In other words, I do have hats in the queue, but I’m getting them out quicker than the estimated time I gave to the clients. I’m going to pause, though, and knit something else so I don’t go crazy, so it’ll probably go back to “right on time” in the next few days. Knitting time will slow down after school’s out on Friday, anyway, and then the hubby’s out of town next week. Bleah.

Hats up next for Oregon, Australia, and Charlotte!