I'm Frackin' Psychic

I think I am causing things to happen. Listen, the other day I blogged about Batman. And Friday, the original Batmobile broke down on an Oklahoma highway. And before, I blogged about The Marx Brothers and Duck Soup, and guess what was on TCM Channel yesterday? But I guess About.com was a little off base with their "don't say crazy things on your blog if you want a job" comments. I got a call. I accepted an offer. And I will rejoin the ranks of the employed this week.

Speaking of unemployed... Take a look. This is a building in downtown Indy. Apparently it was hit by strong winds last night, pretty much right after John's concert. People were still around and saw it happen, even. (I was relieved to know that Johnny was okay.) You can see how the glass is falling out still, and the insides of these offices have just been sucked right out. They've shut this whole, 36-story building down and blocked off the surrounding streets. Stuff is still falling off and out of the building. How messed up is that?

You can see more here.

I'm okay, though. Some of you have sent emails asking. Thanks, all. Really, I think my tomato took the worst of it. (And T, but he was covered with a laundry basket.) Hope all of you are doing okay. Kim, you've had some of the same bad weather come your way, haven't you?

On to the knitting. (You'll have to excuse me tonight. I have a little problem with attention deficit dis--hey, what's that?)

Here's a skein of the Ping Pong I got the other day. I've got 16 skeins of it. So that's like 928 yards. I can do a whole lot with 928 yards of bulky yarn, right? I went back and forth on what to do with it. I love bulky yarn because you can make a whole sweater in like, 60 seconds. But, sometimes bulky yarn makes a bulky sweater, which makes a bulky Pat. And believe me, I don't need any help with that.

I had planned to do maybe a simple v-neck, with a big honking cable down the front. But, frankly, I've made 3 of the same sweaters in the last year and a half. One has 3 cables on the front. One has one cable and a v-neck. One is just a regular pullover. But it's all the same sweater, if you know what I mean.

Then I found a nice cardigan pattern in the four foot high stack of patterns I've printed from the internet. (I love the internet.) But I just couldn't make the guage fit without doing some kind of algabraic alchemy. You know, like with percents and ratios. And, remember, I promised Mr. Leach that I would never use math in the real world.

Then I remembered Stephanie Japel's Minisweater/ Boobholder. (Ha! It's fun to say boobholder in regular conversation, isn't it?) I've made two of these already. One for M, who is perfectly shaped for almost any item of clothing. And one for me, not so perfectly shaped. (Unless you have a thing for slightly chubby middle aged redheads... Call me.)

I dropped the poofy sleeves on both versions because I don't like poof much. And I also dropped those pointy things Stephanie edged hers with. I've got enough stuff that I don't need a bunch of triangles pointing the way, if you know what I mean. For M, I knit the rest of the pattern as written, because... see above. She makes everything look good.

For me, I lengthened the waist to a cropped length to cover my pudge. I'm thinking, for this new version, that I will make long or 3/4 sleeves, too and belling them out a little.

So, I guess this Boobholder won't bear much resemblence to the original. I just like saying Boobholder.

Take a look at this. It's some of the yarn I got from the Dollar Tree. I love the color, especially for spring. But the texture is weird. It's like a railroad yarn with only one rail. I knit a swatch and it looked similar to something like Matrix. So I went to the Bernat site and looked at the Matrix patterns. I saw this one, which I pictured under my cream colored suit at my new job.

So I fracked around with it. Had to adjust needle size and number of stitches to get guage, because the yarn's not a great substitution. And then, I decided you couldn't see this stitch texture anyway, because the texture of the yarn overpowers. But you know, with me, patterns are more like guidelines than law. So I knitted a couple of inches.

And then I frogged it out.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this now. I've got 6 skeins of it. Oh well, not like I don't have other yarn in my stash that hasn't told me what it wants to be yet. Ha! Most of it, in fact, is silent.

It fears me, I think.