Yes, yes, yes, it's another Delia Is Knitting Something She'll Probably Never Finish post.

I was out with Emily (part of my straight girl harem) on Sunday and we ended up at Joann's because I needed some DPNs for my Endpaper Mitts. I saw they just got in a shipment of Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool and the second I saw it, I saw Brooklyn Tweed's Saddle Shoulder Aran Cardigan and didn't think twice. I bought three skeins and sat with ants in my pants at the write-in that night until I could go home and cast on.



Look at that GQMF, goddamn.

The pattern, of course, is impossible to find. I have some EZ books that have early versions of it -- basically, other cardigans with similar cable and aran panels -- but she knits cardigans in the round as pullovers and then steeks them to turn them cardigans. Steeking scares the living hell out of me because you are cutting your sweater in the middle and then picking up the stitches to make hems. Just looking at people's steeking projects is terrifying because if you do it wrong, you've lost all of your knitting and you have pieces of useless yarn left over. Yikes.

So I've spent the last two nights poring over aran cable patterns trying to find ones that are really simple and look sharp. I've settled on the horseshoe pattern (the twisty branching cables next to the button bands), but I'm trying to find a good replacement for the diamond pattern. I like the challenge of aran panels, but I think a lot of the cables are super bulky-looking and unflattering, which is why I was so drawn to the BT cardigan -- the cables are all one-over twists, which are much slimmer and use fewer stitches.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do this all on circs and just hold off the sections on scrap yarn once I get to the sleeve decreases, or if I'm going to do it in pieces and sew them together. The pattern calls for doing the whole thing at once (and steeeeeeking, noooo), and so the maths I've seen for cable panels are for doing it all in one piece. But I haven't decided what cables I'm going to use, and I don't even know my gauge.

( A few notes, pulled from cardigans I like. )

( Reference photos. Not dial-up friendly. )

I broke in my snow boots, trudging through slush on Clinton Street to get to House of Aromas for a NaNoWriMo write-in. That night, I had trouble finding Colleen on Facebook, and we joined a Facebook group on where sexy had been before Justin Timberlake brought it back.

At a write-in on the near-bottom floor of Stanely Hall, with a handful of undergrad community kids, we rolled around on the floor, listening to Lemon Demon and watching videos of clowns yodeling and quintuplet babies cackling.

We watched Peter Pan at one point, and I felt like a big pedohead because Jeremy Sumpters is fit.

We read and saved about half of the Natalie Dee/Toothpaste For Dinner/Married to the Sea comics in the span of a month.

It all started when we put some Mentos in a two-liter of Diet Coke and watched V for Vendetta.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

I <3 The Fleet

Warning: this is long. Colleen demanded I put it up for the world to see, but since there was flouncing involved and I was at work without screencaps, it will be a biased report (in my favor, naturally, but I feel that it was in my favor to begin with). I have all of his comments in Gmail thanks to Facebook's email notifications, but my comments are lost in the tubes purgatory. :(

For those new to The Life And Times of Delia, I am an internet drama addict. I don't go for IRL drama so much because The Fleet is incestuous and every I know knows everyone else I know, and it becomes a big convluted game of Telephone whenever drama gets involved, so this is a rarity for me.

Today was the perfect example of Internet Drama Gone Bad. ( Brought to you by the phrase 'straw man.' Learn it, use it often, use it in inappropriate contexts! )

( The end? Are you kidding? )

( The End! For realsies! )

It was a beautiful day in the Wank Neighborhood. I haven't felt this relaxed in weeks. Good lord this post took forever to compile. Two hours. I should have a beer. ;)

I wanted to take the homemade pledge this holiday season and make all of my gifts, but I know some people who are expecting things I cannot make such as DVD box sets and such, so I'm going to make and Etsy as many of my gifts as I can.

Right now, I'm scouring Ravelry for scarves 'n hats patterns so I can make scarves 'n hats sets for comicalsneakers' family. This is just a reference of the patterns and color combos I'm considering. ( Peruse if you want; there are pretty knitting pictures. )

So, comicalsneakers. Help me out here. Give me some colors.

Some patrons, I swear.

Something you should know about Coralville's circulation system: it's old and cranky. We have DVD limits, and patrons hate that they can't go over the limit on self-checkouts. This is a problem because they usually put their movies in the drop box, which is checked once an hour, and they're not checked in by the time they're ready to check out. So they have to come to the desk and we go to the bins and get them, check them in, and then check out. It's a huge pain in the ass when you have to do it upwards of a hundred times a day.

So, Mr. Convenience walks up to the desk with a set of three DVDs in each hand. He puts one stack on the desk and says, "I'm going to check these out."

"Okay," I say, and I pull them toward the unlocker.

"But I'm returning these ones first," he says, walking away.

I hold my hands out. "I can take them here, so we can get them off your card before you check out." Most patrons prefer that we check them in at the desk instead of the bin. Most patrons.

"No!" He shouts. "You always make me wait. I'm not going to wait for you to check them in. I'm putting them in here so you can check me out first." And he drops them in the bin.

"I... I'm pretty sure it would be quicker to --"

"NO! I'm not going to wait for you to check them in. Your stupid library always does that. Check me out first!" He says as he throws his card on the desk, upside down.

"It would be quicker for me to check them in than to perform a system override on every single thing you're checking out," I say. And it's true. And it's also more convenient that way.

But here's the kicker. He leans closer (I'm at a desk that's low to the ground) and says a few inches from my face, "I'm not afraid to to make this about my convenience."

"Fine," I spit, and I don't say another word to him. I take extra time comparing the barcode and disc numbers and doing individual overrides. It takes at least five minutes longer than it would have if I'd checked in the DVDs.

He doesn't thank me as he leaves.

I considered giving him a loud, passive-aggressive, "You're welcome!" as he walked away. I considered putting a note on his card saying, "ASSHOLE. REVOKE LIBRARY PRIVILEGES." I considered demanding a convenience charge since the services I was providing were completely free.

I also considered ripping his pants open and pulling his testicles off.

I just... I've never had a patron this hell-bent on being an asshole before. I've had some dicks, but it's usually just their way. He was trying. Does it even need to be said? He was from Fairfield.

And the runner-up for crazy library patron was the woman who grilled me on juvenile checkout policies, specifically why we don't "police" what children check out, and why we "don't care about parents' rights."

I'm teaching myself CSS and QuarkXPress, and rethinking my career choice. Maybe I'm better off working behind-the-scenes instead of directly with the public. I can do it, and I can do it well, but it makes me so depressed and misanthropic. I don't want to be the crazy cat lady in five years.

I was walking out of Biotest and calling Colleen to watch Heroes when I heard my phone ping me with a text message. I hung up, thinking it was Colleen texting me, and found that it really really wasn't.

Do any of you know a Tami at 319 936 4284?

I don't, but if you're ever in need of shady, misspelled drugs from the worst n00b dealer in town, she's your girl.

received from 3199364284 05:33 pm: you interested in ten 30 mg aderal?

sent from 319400XXXX 05:34 pm: ...Do I know you?

received from 3199364284 05:35 pm: this is tami

received from 3199364284 05:36 pm: u r funny

sent from 319400XXXX 05:38 pm: Cute. Are you new or something? Have some sense. Make sure you have the right number before you make a deal.

received from 3199364284 05:43 pm: call me
(this was after she called me, as if I'd pick up)

sent from 319400XXXX 05:46 pm: No. I'm not stupid. You clearly are. If you have the wrong number, STOP TRYING TO SELL. How do you know I'm not a cop?

Obviously she was smart enough to stop when I said COP.

I never thought I'd be teaching dumbass adderal dealers how to do their jobs right. Hell, I haven't even bought anything in well over a year -- and that was pot, in spring of last year, because I rarely smoke and when I do, it's Other People's Pot -- let alone ever sold anything. I should not know more about dealing than the people doing it.

It's really tragic what kids these days have fallen to. They can't even deal drugs properly. No wonder the jails are full of addicts. They're all fucking stupid.

Also, hee! Zombie!Sylar on Heroes next week. The more I watch this show, the more I hate it. Also, the more I want to pin GQZQ to a wall and do unmentionable things to him.

I am going to hipster hell for this but I just discovered The Arcade Fire. Yes, because of the Wild Things trailer (holy crap, how excited am I for that movie?). Give me music recs! I'm on a new music kick lately.

My tax return has been almost completely spent. I put $500 in savings (I consider this money "spent" even though I still have it, technically), and dropped a lot on yarn today. I mean a lot. I went to Crazy Girl on Tuesday and spent about $23, which is probably the smallest number I have ever had associated with the purchase of yarn. I used all of that yarn up yesterday, too, while watching Buffy (another post, another day). Today I decided I wanted to make a sweater that wouldn't stretch out and become a tent, so after Shift One, I browsed Ravelry and KnitPicks.

And I spent a buttload of money on yarn, with the idea that I'll make a bunch of sweaters this season.

I decided to make the $5 in Paris sweater again, in KP Wool of the Andes, in white and spruce (a dark teal that's all the rage right now). It'll look something like this only more green than blue.

While browsing, I saw the Hollywood Herringbone Sweater and bought some yarn for it in chocolate and daffodil, which will look like this but with this coloring.

I also bought a few more skeins of firecracker heather, because I know that seven is not enough for a cardigan of my size, but I can't decide what I'm going to make. Interweave just released the Katherine Hepburn Cardigan for free, and I wanted to make it with the white yarn I gave up on over the summer, but now I want to make it in the red. It'll look like this but brighter red and I'm extending the torso. But I also want to make a February Lady Sweater, except I'm not sure I have the body type for it because I don't really wear cardigans that button at the bosom. It would look pretty much exactly like this.

So, I got five skeins of spruce, six skeins of white, ten of chocolate, four of daffodil, and five of firecracker heather. That's thirty skeins of yarn, and I spent $56.

Well, the herringbone sweater pattern isn't online, so I went to Home Ec after work to see if they had it (it sold out, I placed an order), and I ended up leaving with a Home Ec shirt and two skeins of Malabrigo Sock, which I'm going to be using for the Endpaper Mitts, as seen here. I think I'm going to do them with the red base, not the yellow. I can only handle so much yellow.

That trip was more expensive, with much less yarn, but it was Malabrigo, so I think the $59 will be worth it.

All this on top of reading the entire Harry Potter series with Sarah, 40+ hours a week of work, hanging out with people, writing, and coordinating NaNo this year. Fuuuuuuck, I am ADD.

Guess who's back on track, money-wise, for moving to Wellington?

I'll give you a hint: IT IS THE SAME GIRL WHO JUST GOT HER GODDAMN TAX REFUND

More substantial post to come when I'm not about to be stabbed with a 17 gauge needle.

I have to give a presentation at ICPL next week on my Sony Reader (alongside someone with a Kindle). What should I talk about? What do you want to know about my Pinto, besides why it's better than a Kindle?

What's up guys?

Coralville is uber-slow right now (20 minutes and I've seen like, five people, one of which gave me candy).

I'm thinking of getting back into the journal of life and regaling you all with thrilling tales of... sitting at a library desk and eating candy.

OHAI So if you're not on my Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, or Facebook friends list (jesus h I think I have a problem), you probably haven't heard about the newest addition to the Delia Family.

Meet my baby, Pinto!



My Sony Reader, named after the nonexistent love child of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, aka the most GQMF EVER.



Pinto and me, we've had some good times, according to my GoodReads. I'm pretty close to the end of the 50 Book Challenge, in August. That's better than any other year I've done it (mostly because every other year I didn't even finish because I'm a loser).

SO WHAT IS UP WITH YOU, EH?

This is crossposted from my DW because some people (I am looking at you, your_lake_como) don't get on their DWs enough.



What time is it? Time to ogle Zachary Quinto?



FUCK. YES.



LET'S DO THIS, GUYS.

( The most necessary picspam ever. )

I'm moving to Wellington next summer. I'm probably going to start yet another (doomed to be abandoned) blog about it.

I have a few Dreamwidth Codes again, because I'm a super-duper paid user.

The Dewey Decimators have won three games this season.

I'm addicted to Twitter and ontd_startrek.

New Job Excitement has worn off and become New Job Boredom.

I'm buying a bright red Sony Reader tomorrow.


How are you guys?

Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to get all the little details of the Dreamwidth/LJ crossover posting and feeds and things sorted out.

I will not have (m)any locked posts, so friend the DW feed on LJ: delia_dw. I logged in to LJ with my OpenID, which is pretty much useless because I still read my flist on LJ here and friending the OpenID does not friend my DW, so if there are locked posts, they still won't go through. But you can log in to DW with OpenID and read locked posts through there. Or get a Dreamwidth code from dw_codesharing.

Yes, I am working on getting codes, but I messed up the PayPal payment and had to use one of my codes on myself (the other hasn't come through, and since my paid account isn't working yet, I don't have that extra code either).

Man, I'm hungry. I'm catsitting and there's food, but most of it is either the last of something or something unopened, and it's just not polite to eat the first and last of someone's food. Dear Pizza, please come to me, kthx.

I've had a really big hassle getting my Dreamwidth account going, and ended up having to use one of my invite codes on myself.

I have, I believe, two more codes. I will have more once I get my paid account, and I was going to offer to buy paid accounts for people, but apparently I fail at PayPal and my own paid account won't go into effect until the 8th because I paid by e-check (I do not know what this means, I never use PayPal). This is my Dreamwidth Account:

delia.dreamwidth.org

I have wanted my first name as a username for so long, you guys.

I'm sitting in front of my bedroom window watching the sporadic rainstorms and listening to Tristan Prettyman while working on Amanda's shrug. The shrug looks like this. I'll probably finish it tonight.

It feels like spring, and it's so nice.

I was going to clean up and rearrange the apartment again (I compulsively move furniture every few months) to accommodate my new desk and bookshelves, but it's so calming just sitting here that I don't want to get up. I've sorted through the laundry and scooped the cat box, and eventually I'm going to move my bed to make room for the bookshelf I got from Nialle yesterday when I picked up my Tinker Toys.

I have so much yarn and paperwork and books scattered around my bed. I really should come up with some kind of organizing system so I look less like a slob. But I have no real motivation to pick up, unless someone's coming over.

But there was one thing I had motivation for today, and it didn't even require getting out of bed.

I hadn't been to the bookshop in nearly a month, and I went after Biotest on Wednesday to catch up with Nialle. Midway through a sentence, I was distracted by Tinker Toys, and I promised to buy them when I got my next Biotest payment on Friday (I owed La-La-Laura money, so that's where my first Biotest donation went). So yesterday I stopped by during Coffeetown and picked up the bookcase and Tinker Toys, excited for finally unpacking my romance novels -- after nine months in boxes -- and making a yarn swift out of the Tinker Toys.

Yes. A yarn swift.

I do not like useless toys like Barbies and dump trucks. I like to make toys practical.

So today I made my own Tinker Swift.



It may not look like much, but it's the best $27.51 I've spent in a while, including the trip to Home Ec for Amanda's yarn this week that included an anniversary sale on cotton-linen yarn which will become a summer cardigan for me.



This is a skein of Knit Picks Bare Merino Superwash Wool I bought a few weeks ago and planned to dye, but I wanted to test out the swift, so I might dye the socks later.

It works wonderfully, when the cat isn't lunging at the yarn. It doesn't spin into the middle where the ball is; I balled some of the yarn and stuck it on a double pointed needle and shoved it in the middle to show that yes, Virginia, it works.



I'll probably put the two extra yellow rods in the top and use them to wind skeins that can't be wrapped around the longer rods, like the KP Palettes I've got. They're wrapped in big, loose cakes and it's hard to find the middle-pull end. I have not tested this yet, though.

I was going to make a motorized ball-winder out of Lego or Knex, but I don't like the cakes that winders make and I always end up balling them anyway, so I just ball the yarn straight off the swift.

Ta-dah!

NOTE: I hate surfing LJ without a paid account. I don't know how you guys do it. I cannot wait for my Dreamwidth code holy damn.

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will - allegedly - create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

Picked by battlepunk

| Heaving Bosoms without vampires!
I just want to tell stories and not have a shitty job! I want to write trashy romance novels and not put up with d-bag library patrons. My trashy romance novels will have having bosoms, but no vampires. I use this for library posts a lot.

| Knitting - now with more sparkles!
The first time I saw the image for this icon, I immediately thought "Do I dazzle you?" And yes, Malabrigo yarn frequently dazzles me.

| Twatlight - makes RDJ want to do drugs a
...gain. Okay, so I go over tag limits. This was from an ONTD post where some magazine wanted to poll people over which is better, HP or Twatlight. ONTD members spammed the shit out of it, commenting as dead and/or famous and/or fictional people. RDJ is one of my favorites. The Hitler ones were pretty funny, too.

| Passive Aggressive Friends
This is actually a quote from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which people like to tell me every time I use it (because I have no idea, ever!). I use it for my passive-aggressive posts a lot, obviously, because it's so passive-aggressive. Or when I'm being an attention whore.

| Who - heeey guise
I don't use this icon very often, mostly in DW communities or when I have no other appropriate icon. It's Ten from the episode Partners in Crime, when he's peering over the cubicle to get a girl to print something for him. And I think his face is adorable. I imagine him saying HEEEEEEY GUISE every time I see it, so that's how I tagged it.

The hero's occupation often forms a shorthand to his character. He's a cop, a SEAL, a security consultant? He has bulging biceps, a tendency toward suspicion, and trusts no one, not even Fox Mulder. He's an artist, or a writer? He's ornery, isolated, somewhat misanthropic, and not at all pleased to see you. He's a diplomat, a CEO, a billionaire CEO diplomat? A tycoon of some unidentified industry? He's ruthless, confident, perhaps even debonair and stylish in an effortlessly authoritative sort of way. See what we mean? Job = identity = shorthand character sketch.

(emphasis mine)

I love this book so hard.

It's also got a graphical representation of the evolution of romance novel heroes (from cavemen to savages to tycoons to werewolves), color-by-numbers, a maze, and even a Write Your Own Vampire Romance mad lib.

I need a nap like you wouldn't believe, so expect me to be coherent another time.

Am I really the only one who sees how similar #amazonfail is to Strikethrough? Really? The only thing missing is cat macros this time, but seriously, this is just like Strikethrough. New policy regarding items tagged with buttsex goes crazy over holiday weekend; heads of the company say nothing, then give conflicting answers to third-party barely-read sources, then say nothing for ages.

It's Strikethrough, but without the striking!




I am getting a little "Oh, for fuck's sake!"-ed out after seeing all these comments about how even though Amazon is Teh Eebil, no matter how much people want to boycott them for Teh Eebil, they won't because they're too fucking lazy to get their books anywhere else. It's like there are no other options for them.

"Wah, my local store doesn't carry Nora Roberts!"

"Wah, I have to wait for books at the library!"

"Wah, there are billions of websites and only Amazon sells books!"

"Wah, it's so cheap, no one else in the whole wide internet is cheap!"

People are so fucking retarded sometimes.

Especially when they violate Godwin's Law over this. Seriously. Comparing Amazon to Hitler is just stupid.

So as I said months ago, HERE are step-by-step instructions with pictures, on how to purchase cheap books online and not support the end of the free world as we know it. And guess what -- you save money when you don't shop at Amazon. I know. I just blew your mind, didn't I?

I got an email from LJ this morning saying that my paid account will lapse in 12 days. Conveniently, six days after that, Dreamwidth opens up their beta to paid users. I will be purchasing a paid account with Dreamwidth and deleting my LJ at that time. I may delete my LJ before buying a Dreamwidth account simply because I do not believe in "plus" accounts on LJ, or the selling of my friends' information against their consent (which goes hand in hand with "plus" status). I believe in the Dreamwidth project, and I hope that some of you will join me -- I will have invite codes, so it'll be like Old School LJ, except with less censorship and more consistent staffing.

ETA: I may downgrade to Basic and keep reading my Flist, but my posts will all be at DW.

I SOUND SO FLOUNCY, RITE?


Today I went over to sai12's house and watched more Bones and worked on some more socks. On my way out the door I discovered that the Knitpicks order I placed on Tuesday was already on my porch! Last time I bought yarn, it took almost a month, and this time it was here within four days! (I didn't leave the house yesterday, so it's been sitting outside for a while)


Two skeins each of Tumeric, Tidepool Heather, and er... Charcoal? I can't remember the black one and god forbid I reach over the foot and a half and pull it out of the bag. There's also three skeins of Bare Merino which is squishy and wonderful and will be dyed with Fun Things like Kool Aid or possibly TEA.

I'm excited for the Tumeric; I found a sock on Ravelry that looked so great in gold yarn I had to buy some. And I really like Tidepool Heather, even though it's not My Color at all (I'm a Fall, it's more of a Spring). And you can never go wrong with black, especially heathered black. I dig heathered yarns so hard.

( Socks, plus the pattern! )

PS Have you heard about Amazon Fail? Amazon Rank, as Google Bombed by Smart Bitches, and reported by Dear Author. Don't fucking piss of romance novel readers, guys! Find the #amazonfail hashtag to follow the shenanz on Twitter.

HOLY FAIL, BATMAN! Amazon, please fire the people you hired from LiveJournal. That shit didn't work in 2007, and it's not going to work now.

IOWA I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!