ALL THE YARN.

[sciatrix]

It's been a really long day and I'm really frazzled from work and all the annoying stupid mistakes I made today and I just got home from seven hours over the microscope--BUT I PROMISED TO POST MORE. SO. (I do not promise this post will be coherent. I have not managed coherent for three hours now. BUT IT WILL EXIST.)

So yesterday I went out and bought four skeins of yarn, partly out of a need for something comforting to do and partly because EVERYTHING WAS ON SALE FOR LIKE 40% OFF, and I am helpless in the face of such magic. I am already plotting what to do with it. (Why did no one warn me about the accumulating yarn thing before I started knitting? I already have, like, two bags fully of it, and part of that is the Gift Yarn that one of my friends left me with as she was getting ready to move.)

Right now, what I am actually working on is a trilobite hat. I am working on this hat partly because I wanted to learn to cable, but mostly because I am a giant biology nerd with a huge fondness for trilobites. Cabling is turning out to be... much easier than I thought it would be, actually. It looked scary, how was I to know it's amazingly not?

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[sciatrix]

Two of the skeins I bought were sock yarn, actually, because I also wish to learn how to knit socks. This hat is in fact my... *counts* sixth project, of which three have been knit in the round. It is seriously not that hard as long as you are careful not to twist the knitting, and actually I think I like knitting in the round more than I like knitting flat because you don't have to keep flipping the project over.

Mind you, I'm currently in the throes of what I suspect is a new obsession and already beginning to hunt for books on the history of knitting and yarn, sooooooo.... yeah. Heh. Speaking of, happen to know any good ones?

[shiyiya]

Don't you have to have double-ended needles or circular needles to knit in the round? I've only got normal ones that I think my grandma gave me. I do rather want to get circulars though. Because I vaguely want to produce a baby blanket for a friend (who isn't pregnant and isn't trying but will in the indefinite future, presumably in several years when her husband isn't a grad student anymore and they have more money. If I start soon, it might be done by the time they have a kid! :P) and large things don't fit very well on normal needles.

I can see that, because I like crocheting round things better than flat things. The texture's nicer too, I feel. Which resulted in my doing ever row of the flaps of my Jayne hat individually, so they wouldn't be a sudden texture change, so I had to tie off and cut the yarn at both ends of every row and weave in all the dozens of ends and gods it was tedious.

I don't know about books! Have you joined Ravelry? There's an excellent pattern search function (knit and crochet both), and lots of the ones indexed are free, and there are tools for keeping track of your yarn stash, which would probably be easier to use starting when it's relatively small. (I haven't updated mine in quite a while and I don't think I ever finished cataloging it.)

[sciatrix]

You do, actually. But they're not very expensive--I think I paid something like $4 for my double-pointed needle sets and $6 for my circulars?

Oh man, weaving in the ends is sooooo boring. I knitted a really fabulous Hufflepuff scarf a few weeks ago for the Harry Potter movie midnight showing I went to a while back, and I ended up leaving all the ends for last because I was trying to do so much at once and because I was knitting it in the form of a tube that I sewed shut at the end with the tassels later. I ended up turning it inside out to get all the tails and it was the most tedious thing ever.

I have joined Ravelry--and, erm, gotten rather addicted to looking at patterns, as it happens. (I'm Sciatrix there too!) I catalogued all the yarn I have bought, but I haven't gone through and put up the Gift Stash in, partly because I am unsure I will ever use it. Much of it is kind of hideous or has a godawful texture.

Nah, I'm more looking for history books--I tend to get into phases where I want to learn everything about a given topic, and right now I kind of want to read stuff like--how yarn is made, what different fibers are better for different tasks, Interesting Knitted and Crocheted Things Through the Ages, that sort of thing.

[shiyiya]

The problem is less the price and more the fact that I already have three times as much stuff as really fits in my room and I need to get rid of 90% of it since I intend to move across the Atlantic next year. :P

The handy thing about crocheting is that by and large you can work them in, but you have to be careful to hold them in place and get all the way to the end, and you have to keep tying off and ugh. And at one point I notice I'd skipped a stitch five rows back. I don't normally mind frogging, but this I had to work out two knows every row, and then I couldn't re-use the pieces of yarn because they were too short because of the missed stitch. Augh.

Heh, I have some godawful yarn that I think one of my aunts gave me or something. My mum asked for a camera case made of some of it (giant fat varigated rainbow held together with fuzzy mohair pinky-orange, it is a HIDEOUS combination) but it's so irritating working with fuzzy yarns that I gave up a couple rows in and made her one with some of the orange from the Jayne hat skeins instead.

The only think I know of at all like that is the chapter on dyeing and spinning your own yard in Reader's Digest's Back To Basics, an enormous book that for some reason we own two copies of and I have pored over since I was little. Well, and my Gnomes book, which I currently don't know where it is but also talks about dyes, though that's in context of people six inches tall. Heh. I wasn't really saying Ravelry was like what you asked, it just sparked off a oh hey Ravelry exists in my brain for some reason :P I have added you! I am Shiyiya basically everywhere, heh.

For some reason I am repeatedly typing Ralvelry. Wtf?

(I am also currently sewing a pillowcase back together after ripping the rather itchy lace off of it. After being an incredibly tomboyish child, I have bafflingly grown up to want to cook and knit and crochet and spin and garden and make clothes and learn to embroider. I don't even know. Lady Sandrilene fa Toren may have influenced the embroidery part.)

[sciatrix]

*considers own minimally-cross-country move next year* Yeaaaaah. At least needles are small and lightweight? I'm more worried about my massive book collection, to be honest. *regretfully considers what to sell*

Oh man, I don't have anything quite that bad--the worst of them visually is this nasty purple-and-green thing which is also fairly soft. I am thinking of making a hideous sweater with it for my dog, who will certainly not appreciate it. It'd endlessly amuse me, though. (And there was black suede in there! I have absolutely no idea what to do with that but I am sure I can find something. Totally the best of the lot.)

I think there's a trick to knitting them in as you go, too, but I haven't remembered to check it out yet. I need to figure out how that works at some point. Or bug Viresecence, who is my own personal kniting guru, into telling me.

The whole growing up to want to cook and knit thing has always amused me, because of my middle sister and I, I am indisputably the butch one. (Well, out of all of us, really, but my youngest sister is nine and so much younger than I am I don't bother to compare us all that often.) She is the girly pretty sweet kind one who wants to go into nursing and I am the short-haired, acerbic, scientist-in-training. And yet I am by far the more domestic one. This pleases me, partly because I enjoy fucking with gendered expectations.

[shiyiya]

The good thing about my books is that most of them have been in boxes for.... five years? I'm bad with time, since we removed the contents of my room to paint it, and I haven't missed most of them, so they're more painless to get rid of. The main problem is the *new* books I irrationally persist in buying. (I want Seanan McGuire to be able to feed her cats! But uh she has six books out so far and I own all of them and there's another one in two months and three more next year....)

At least I can sell my Piers Anthony without remorse, now that I've tried to reread Xanth and been utterly horrified at what a douche he is and how I never noticed before. (I don't think I even got all the way through the first book, which contains the horrible horrible rape trial ([TW] "I presume she would have fled him at the outset, had she disliked him--and that he would not have forced her if she trusted him. In a small community like this, people get to know each other very well, and there are few actual surprises. This is not conclusive, but it strongly suggests she had no strong aversion to contact with him, and may have tempted him with consequence she later regretted. I would probably, were this case to come up in formal court, find the man not guilty of the charge, by virtue of reasonable doubt." EW PIERS ANTHONY WHAT THE FUCK.) and the line "Bink felt sorry for his opposite. How could she avoid being seductive? She was a creature constructed for no other visible purpose than ra---than love." Ugh ugh ugh.

Neither of the yarns are actually ugly on their own, but held together they are truly ghastly. I showed my dad what mum had picked and his reaction was "...well, at least nobody will steal it?"

I don't even fuck with gender roles, I have hip-length hair and wear basically exclusively skirts and dresses since I gave up on pants a couple years ago for never fitting. And I dropped out of high school and intend to become a housewife. I feel vaguely like Feminism's Worst Nightmare, an impression not discouraged by certain Feministe commenters. (I do not read Feministe anymore.) The only checkmarks I really skip are religion, makeup, babies, and straightness. :P Hell, I even have nail polish on right now, though that's mostly a PRETTY COLOURS ARE FUN!

(I convinced my mum to give me a pixie cut when I was five. It looked horrible on me and I've been growing my hair out since. I like my hair.)

Gender roles are weird.

You know what else is weird? AGING. I turn twenty in wtf less than two months what the hell. My mum turns sixty next year. The daughter of one of my cousins is in high school and I remember when she was four. AGING IS SO WEIRD.

[sciatrix]

I thought I was going to be here two years, not one! I thought I could get away with unpacking and having three bookshelves! I was excited about it! Lolno.

Oh god, Piers Anthony. I am desperately grateful I was only exposed to him in very small doses until I got older and developed more of an awareness about these things. (Anne McCaffrey's work, now... *wince*)

I have actually been gradually cutting my hair shorter and shorter since I turned thirteen and got some say as to what it looked like, so yeaaaaah. Heh. Eventually I will probably shave my head just to see what it looks like. Also, I look like a spaniel with long hair. It is seriously unattractive.

OH GOD I KNOW. I will be twenty-one in two months! I am GRADUATING COLLEGE SOON HELP HELP I AM NOT READY TO BE AN ADULT YET--o wait that is what graduate school is for!

[shiyiya]

I have lived in the same house/room since I was four. My stuff is a NIGHTMARE.

Anne McCaffrey, whyyyyyy must you have so much rape glorification in Pern, I *like* Pern D: Menolly! And Piemur! And Master Robinton! And fire-lizards! And... F'nor basically raping Brekke with the strong implication that that's what she needed to get over losing her dragon. Ugh.

See, I look really silly with short hair! It suits some people but I'm not one of them. I'm kind of glad I got the finding that out over with in kindergarten so I've had a decade and a half for it to grow back.

Hee, that's one way to look at it! I am.. not doing any school, because I haven't the faintest what I'd want to to in school and also am going to move to England it it just seems a lot like going into debt to be miserable for no good reason. (I did not function well in school.)

[sciatrix]

...wow, the longest place I ever lived was eight years, and that was more than ten years ago now. I've moved between cities about once every four years since I was ten. I am really, really about ready to stop now.

She has such interesting world-building! It's a pity it is rife with skeevy consent issues. *sigh* And the stuff with F'lar and Lessa was none too pretty, either. Ew ew ew ew.

I think I had hair longer than shoulder-length for a sum total of like three years of my life. It definitely did not suit me. Admittedly, part of this is that I never learned how to deal with it--I cannot do a ponytail that is not at the base of my neck for the life of me, and good luck keeping it out of my face then--but part of it is just that I look silly with long hair.

I do pretty well in school, but if grad school was just MORE CLASSES I wouldn't be bothering--I'm getting sick of undergrad, to be honest. But I took a job in a lab a while back and I love that like burning, and grad school is supposed to have waaaaaay more focus on experiments and less on classes themselves, and I am all in favor of that. Plus I'll get paid. (Well, maybe not if I end up using grad school as an excuse to move to the UK, since their system of funding grad students is really sucky if you are not a citizen of the EU, but frankly I *should* be getting paid as a graduate student, since I'll also be running around doing experimental work and TAing and that sort of thing.)

[shiyiya]

Thinking about it, I wonder if consciously or unconsciously my dad decided to stay in one place because they moved a lot when he was a kid. (Granddad worked for the government. He was a rocket scientist! Worked on the Titan missiles. But yeah, they moved rather a lot of times.)

And Jaxom does it too! Bloody everywhere. Grumble.

I have worn my hair braided basically 24/7 about since middle school, heh. It tangles horribly within about five seconds if I leave it down, so. (And I can't do a high ponytail that doesn't look shit. I can do high pigtails and then braid them, though it always makes me feel like Pippi Longstocking.) I've got it in two (low) braids right now, and they are reminding me why I usually wear one braid by dint of falling over my shoulders all the time and irritating me. My hair is down to my hips now, which I'd be pleased with except then I read, say, The Hero And The Crown with Aerin-sol's floor-length curly red hair and am hopelessly envious.

My brain just doesn't seem to work with the structure of schools here. Lectures yes, classwork yes, tests yes, homework no. And homework is the greater part of most grades now and it was fairly disastrous. Where in the UK would you possibly be going? (My fiance's in greater London and it would be cool to know people, even theoretical future people, who are not hir friends. Nothing against hir friends, but they're hirs, not mine, and I am kind of endlessly awkward about them. I have some old internet friends in Bradford, but that's kind of far :P)

[sciatrix]

My dad was a Navy brat, so I suspect the moving-every-four-years thing is partly an offshoot of that? He insists that we totally don't move that much, not nearly as much as he did, and I should have been grateful to have gone to two high schools and not four! (Was not grateful. Did not want to leave my first high school. Oh, well.)

Mine also tangles easily, being very very fine, but at least cutting it short has alleviated that tendency except for one specific knot that likes to form when I'm not looking. It's about an inch long now, which makes me happy. My sister has the magical ability to do a high ponytail and make it look nice, which I tend to stare at in envy. On the other hand, when my baby sister was too little to take care of her own hair my middle sister always had to do her hair up because I was incompetent, so there's a bright side to everything!

The two schools I'm applying to are in Manchester and Edinburgh, so there? I am not really optimistic about funding and I sort of need the money to support myself, but it's worth a shot.

[shiyiya]

We used to DREAM about living in a cardboard box!

Mine isn't particularly fine, but it's rather curly (I had ringlets when it was shorter, but the weight of it stretches it into waves now). If I try and do high ponytails I always end up with lumps in the hair around it and wishing I had six hands.

Yeeeah the unis in the UK have always charged more for overseas and I'm getting the impression that's getting even worse while they're starting to change $lots for locals too because the government there are also being douches. Sigh.