All the difference

So, when you're a yarn afficionado, when do you know when to draw the line at *too much* yarn?

Is it when you run out of storage space?

When you reach SABLE (stash acquired beyond life expectancy)?

When someone else in the household starts to complain that you could be featured on hoarders?

When someone else in the family thinks you have too much?

When you can't carry it home?

When you can't knit it all in a year?

For me it isn't any of these things. I am not uncomfortable having a lot of yarn. Yarn is light and doesn't take up too much space and is decorative and gives me a hobby to fill my snerk free time and produces a useful product. It is a post-apocalyptic survival skill and an expensive way to expand your sock collection. It can be like admiring art, a way to appreciate textures and colors. One of my favorite artists is Van Gogh and the first time I saw a real Van Gogh in person I was struck--not only by the style of his work, the swirls and semi-fantastica interpretation of position, landscape, sky--but by the chewy slathered texture of the paint, like someone had slapped frosting on the canvas, and by the drenched colors. I like both of those things together. I can't make art and I can't own a Van Gogh, but I can buy yarn, and use it, and appreciate it.

So for me, the point at which I have too much yarn is when I cease to appreciate it. Not that it just becomes about acquisition or anything like that, no--it's just that I am easily distracted and when something new comes along it's all I think about. I forget the charms of this sock yarn

(Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Fingering in Mardi Gras)
which I made my sister turn around and drive back to the LYS for because I couldn't get it out of my head, and which comforted us through the miserable gray expanse of Indiana and Ohio by being bright and cheerful and non-monotonous on our dashboard

as soon as this one came into my life

(Green Dragon Yarns Sock(tm) in Somerset)

I love it and squish and want to call it George. It's a huge 490 yd hank--big enough for a pair of socks and something else, or a shawl of some sort, but I really want to turn it into a pair of Leyburns and then some sort of mitts.

So I am not interested in stashing down, in losing the weight of my yarn. I love the lot of them. I just want some way to make myself go back and regain that optimism that I had when I first picked these balls up. I spend time trolling on ravelry, searching for patterns to match old yarns, but inevitably, unless that yarn is already balled up and I am feeling particularly antsy, I cast on for something else, something fresher in my mind.

I think I'll try that Yarn Harlot's sock club idea--putting pattern + yarn in an opaque bag of some sort and then when one needs to cast on something new (or at least once a month) one goes and plucks something out, and is surprised. I think that would be fun. The only problem is that 1) not everything I'd put in bags is in a ball--a lot is still hanked, since I don't have a swift yet.  Oh, and 2) I also don't have enough needles to cast on everything. I really need more stitch holders or a bigger collection of needlesthataren'tcrap if I want to pull this off.

Case in point, it took me forever to cast on my Shipwreck because I had no size 4 DPNs. Eventually I used size 3s and that worked fine--the middle section is actually a bit looser looking than when I switched to my size 4 circular.

I want to invest in a set of Hiya Hiya Sharp Interchangeables, but it's tough to justify the money in my head. I think it is a wise investment, but my brain keeps going, "$80?? for needles? holy crap! are you serious??" To which I can only sigh, because the size 4s cost me at least 6 bucks and these would give me a range of 10 needles, PLUS three different cables, the equivalent of 30 sets of needles, and it's such a better deal and they're such good needles, I really should suck it up and just get them.

While we're on the topic of sucking it up I should order beads for my Shipwreck and buttons for my Spatterdash. I am running a bit behind on that sort of thing.

While we're on the topic of getting things, I slipped and ordered a new sock yarn on etsy, and three braids of fiber to spin. Odds on me getting distracted halfway through my next sock once this arrives, and ripping it off carelessly to never be touched again while I ruthlessly cast on a new one? Oh wait, no swift! I win!

(This reminds me that I have no project for airplane knitting in a few days. Hm... this is problematic. Shipwreck is at the beads, but no beads. Baby sweater is short on yarn. Spatterdash only needs buttons. The sock is about to be hemmed and needs to be tried on 45 billion times while I find a good hem that is stretchy enough. Guess I have to start something new. I wonder what it shall be. I'd better go play with stash.)

Flail

equally busy. Today is packed, and doesn't include time for things like blogging or cleaning the house, which is all I really want to do. Clean house, play video games, knit. Instead I have

First, in the morning, I will find my passport and bring it in with my box of envelopes to make a copy and mail in my voter registration.
Then I will arrange that meeting later this week
Then I will set up a car appointment to get the former problem fixed
Then I will email L+P
Then I will set up an appt with caps bobdammit
Then I will look into the proposal deadline for APO and its requirements, and see how much I can write up in 1 hour
Then I will work for 1 hour on the TPT essays
Then I will work for 1 hour on an abstract of the paper + a draft of the email to the BH conference
Then I will look into how much $ remains and if I should be arranging any other travel
Then I will contact: 1) T@London about VLT proposal 2) M@DARK about visiting talk 3) C@Arecibo about visiting talk? (but access data first somehow)
Then I have a 2 hour or less meeting with Dr. D
Then I should work on R's research for 2 hours

Today is going to be a kickass day. Though I wish I'd gotten laundry done over the weekend :P

Proposals and Abstracts and Papers and Plots and...

Things are running the busy end of the circle here. I have a telescope observing proposal due in 4 days and my advisors want a draft by tomorrow (which is totally reasonable to have it ahead of time but I am so not near done yet that it's driving me a bit mad); I fixed a lot of my master's work stuff from the last blog post and just need to do some serious curve fitting and then I should be able to finish that up--but the problem is that if I want to finish either of those I'll need to put all my energy into it and I can't put all my energy into two things, I can only put at most half into each. So one of those is probably going to fall by the side of the road and it will probably be the master's work again. Also the paper I should have finished. But there's an abstract due for my second conference this week so I can't ignore that either--and the TPT application, and I have to get the rental car and hotel arranged for my conference coming up at the end of May.

I can't ignore it all and I can't do it all. I guess the only thing to do is to drink a lot of soda and knit on a sock and get ready for my doctor's appointment tomorrow and plan my date.

Wait, that's not a plan at all. That's procrastinating. AGH!

For some reason I don't feel terrified about all of this. Maybe it all still feels feasible. Maybe I just haven't made a good enough list yet. Or maybe this super squishy merino yarn is just that soothing. Who knows!

for the proposal:
-construct sample population: finish calculating limiting declination range; figure out what RA range is reasonable for fall; use the resolution of the telescope to calculate the maximum redshift I can go out to and still resolve down to ~500 pc; and then try and figure out how to find objects that are probably agn-ish, cover the span of agn luminosity (well I can probably use total galaxy luminosity because if it's over 10^44 erg/s it's probably at least a LIRG. right?); and also get a cross over with possible radio feedback sources. And things that can be studied with ALMA if we're lucky enough to get time. Oh, I am so doomed, this is the easiest step

-get the required .cls version of the proposal form and download it and make sure it all compiles and then fill them out, or at least the local-TAC required parts; let's see, that means:

All cover page sections, namely:

• proposal term info
• PI
• abstract
• Observing run
• scheduling restraints
• target list
• PI approval

Experimental design: include how a brightness translates into an estimated required time and any constraints or instructions not included in schedulingconstraints{}.

-email it to my advisors before 10am tomorrow morning
-Spend a significant amount of time laughing ridiculously and maybe do one of those 5 hour caffeine things even though that will mean I will be insane tomorrow and possibly fall asleep during my possible date

Life/organizing:
-feed cats
-set up hotel at the conference
-set up rental car at the conference (priceline?)
-mail lease to landlord for next year with requested fixes (hedge, new window screens, repainting of back door so the paint doesn't flake off and get eaten by cats, new kitchen floor tile as it is currently scarred and puckering, removal of vines that are rather quickly eating the house, chopping down the dead pine tree in back)
-mail voter registration
-mail gift + letter to my aunt
-do laundry so I don't smell like I rolled in something dead
-arrange to have car fixed before I leave town
-find place to park car for Twin to pick it up.

Paper:
-make a collection of MIPS overlaid with my VLT images
-recalculate 2 numbers
-make lots of plots and put them in the paper
-add background section
-redo references
-add analysis section

Masters work:
-look into fitting with gnuplot (from .txt, which I can construct from tempcompare.pro)
-read C.'s thesis for comparison/fitting ideas


So. I'm a bit busy.  Everything italicized needs to be done ASAP, preferably today. Shit. No wonder I am knitting a sock.

EDIT: Magically, the travel company that got the flight set up for me also set up my rental car. Woot!
EDIT2: And I'll share a room with someone who has already arranged a hotel. Sweet! Now I just need to feed the cats and do... the entire.... proposal....... dammit.

Still plottin'

I'm still in a plottin' and plannin' mood.

currently just trying to focus on these questions:
figure out how to extract GBT temp data-- mrdfits? fxposit? other mechanisms? each .fits should just be one temperature or something like that. mrdfits it is; just need to get it to recognize the extension index of 1 instead of the default 0.
plot GBT data and compare it to plots of gainometer data
write one program that calls on tempextract and whatever program I write for the gbt data and plots/compares them both (??)
figure out how to compare them
write first draft of essays for TPT
fill out voter registration form
mail lease to landlord
write first draft of abstract for competitive conference at the end of July
figure out what I would need to observe for my thesis and which telescopes to use.

most of my plotting and planning about knitting has died down a bit, possibly because I'm so close to the end on several projects. My Spatterdash mitts need only buttons and a blocking (though I've given up trying to finish them by the end of the day tomorrow--I've got too much work to do); my Wee Pumpkin Hat needs only a quick blocking; my gift mitts still only need 3 buttons and button loops (aaaaaaaaaaagh fine I will try and do that tonight before I sleep--oh, it's already 11. another time); and I am on the infinitely long bindoff of the Tiny Green Leaves that I am making (took just over 2 skeins; I had to join the third in after a quarter of the bindoff had been completed). Even though startitis is still pretty strong, and I want to cast on about 42 colorwork projects and eight shawls and three sweaters, I seem to be focusing on finishing. I even took out, oh, the second or third thing I ever knit--a cotton dishcloth--and looked into seaming it shut and stuffing it with fluff and catnip to make a kick pillow. I didn't have any other cotton to seam it with so I abandoned that right away, but my point is that I picked up a 4 year old hibernating project to finish it and gave it serious consideration, and it's back on my radar.

we'll see what wins. For once, it might be work--I've spent hours programming and plotting today, and have made a fancy couple of pictures (though not fancy enough; only half the data, and I need the other half from the completely different source before it means anything. See list of questions above).

With that in mind, I'd better get back to the work before this and knit-plannin' become too distracting. But I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of something I finished recently:

Susie's Reading Mitts (formerly retired, now returned to existence on ravelry) in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. One ball of the yarn produced a (slightly shortened) pair of mitts, which I love to pieces--and which were sent off to my LSG swap partner. *sigh* I miss them. But I got something really neat in return

gorgeous and starry, a lace shawl with beads. <3!

Wollmeise

I've wanted to talk about Wollmeise for a long time now.

Wollmeise is sort of a mythological beast in the knitting world--rumor gets out and then people start wondering, "why does everyone talk about that yarn? I've never seen it." The more rumors you hear, the more you become entranced by it, and decide you must have some. This is definitely a yarn worth experiencing in real life.

The most luscious thing about wollmeise is the color. This yarn makes me want to knit things that I'd never dreamed I'd like--teal and yellow. Blue and orange. Brown and orange and a strange shade in between. Combinations of pink and blue, brighter than I would ever normally consider. The secret is the saturation of the colors--so deep and rich--paired with someone who is really really good at naming things evocatively. These skeins are positively drenched in color. The camera does not do them justice.

Some of them are stripier yarns, wildly variegated and undoubtedly gorgeous; but some of them are full of lovely and subtle tones, nearly solid, just enough to give shadow and depth to the cloth.

Wollmeise is in general fairly sturdy--it has a unique base, made of, oh, at least 6 plies. Your standard sock yarn is a 2 or 3 ply. The numerous plies undoubtedly help with the color saturation. They do make the yarn a bit splitty--or rather, it takes a few rows to get used to knitting with it and to not stick the needle through a strand every other stitch. It gives the yarn a different hand, too--it feels very solid to knit with, without much yield like you would normally expect from wool. Some people don't like this, claim it's like cotton--but it does keep your FO from stretching too much once washed, and once knitted up and given a soak the fabric softens and blooms (but doesn't fuzz nearly as badly as most merinos would--that's the multi-ply doing its work again).

These are my favorite socks--warm, well fitted, soft, and in colors that just bring me joy every time I see them. (they look slouchy here because they're being borrowed by a friend who was cold. I took advantage of her to take pictures of them in situ). Personally I was amazed at how they softened after I gave them a bath.

The challenge with acquire Wollmeise is that it is only sold in Germany, from the Wollmeise's website (and there's steep competition during shop updates, let me tell you), or from the Loopy Ewe's website (again, steep competition). My (fairly hefty) stash comes direct from the brick-and-mortar store that I visited in December, my last trip while I was working in Europe. A day trip, from Munich (beautiful city, great open air markets in winter, delicious food, fantastic gluhwein) with a few ravelers I managed to round up, who split the ticket with me (very kind of them!) though they did not want their pictures taken.

The store itself is magical:

So I wound my yarn up

and took it with me

started a sock :)

When in doubt, organize

If you haven't noticed by now, I don't deal well with stress. Or, more likely, I have a hard time handling a wide variety of things that require my attention. Give me one thing to work on and I'll-------well all right, I will try my best to weasel out of it, get distracted by the internet, or read a book. But give me two or three things and I'll focus pretty damned hard on one of them, taking deep breaths as I tell myself, "just get X to the finished stage, then worry about other things". However, if there are more than two or three things, my brain keeps popping back to the other stuff.

What's on my mind now? A lot. a lot of swirling things that keep cycling--they keep coming up, I keep worrying about them, then trying to stuff them down so I can get some work done, then that repeats. Currently worried and thinking about:

Work:
I have so much work to do it's mind boggling. Today my goal is to answer the question, "how do people measure feedback in the circumnuclear region" so that I can see if there's anything I can say about feedback in my short thesis-level timescale. But I also need to look at MIPS images vs my images because my second advisor is back and wants to meet with me and that's one thing he wanted to take a look at. Plus there are two numbers I have to recalculate because I screwed up, and I wrote a program to calculate and graph most of my things but I need to follow through on that and save the graphs in an image format and then put them into my paper draft and also reorganize the table formats in the paper draft. And while we are at it the paper draft needs a new introduction and background section and a complete overhaul of the references, which are not at all accurate. And I have SO MANY PAPERS TO READ AAAAH. But I really need to stay focused on the question for today. But I really need to make those plots, and fix the paper. around and around we go.

On top of that, I also have temperature data for my master's work and I need to figure out how to get it out of its files, into a processable format, then figure out a way to compare it to the other temperature data and make sure that it tracks pretty well, so I can excuse using it to analyze my other data. If I can get through that by Monday I will be in OK shape (not perfect shape). Oh and I should edit that shit first draft of my master's thesis that I threw together in 30 seconds last time. And I was supposed to be working on this for three months and instead I have ignored it. BAD ASTRONOMER. NO SLEEP FOR YOU.

Then I have to access my really old data and poke it a bit because I know my advisor is going to ask about it and it would be nice to get it out of the way but I keep forgetting how to even log in and get at it and I think my password keeps changing AAGH. And I should email my old advisor down there but I don't want to talk to him until I have some work done for him and that's embarrassing. And I should call/contact the guy I am collaborating with at the end of the month so at least he doesn't think I am a slacker.

That's just research. that's not counting all the other shit--I need to organize meetings with my advisor and the admin assistant who does finances, so I can find out which grants are active and which ones I am currently on and if I have travel money and how much. I need to organize an end of the semester meeting for my fellow grad students to have a chance to talk to the department chair, except he's not going to be around much longer so we also need to wait. *sigh*. And there's the whole "adjusting the TA positions to better reflect what needs to be done in the department," even though that's not QUITE my responsibility. And I should email the incoming grads again and make sure they remember to get back to me about stuff. And I have public night on Friday and a doctor's appointment next week and one the week after. *sigh* and I need to go to the gym and exercise too, my health is terrible right now.

And that's not including household--print and sign the new lease, sweep before the dust bunnies eat the cats, do more &(#*&$(*&@)%**)#%*)@*% dishes, try to get rid of the ants--get ant glue I suppose, that might help--organize and clean my room so I can maybe find some of my shit, maybe, do laundry because I am desperately short on pants and maybe go buy some more pants because two out of my three pairs are too tight and I hate wearing too tight pants, they hurt and they suck. Spend time with cats. arrange a date for next week (glee!). Clean out car. call family and see how they are doing. hang out with friends, and call the ones who were having a hard time to make sure they're okay. finish knitting that christmas gift for my aunt and mail it. Knit secret surprises for my sisters and mail them.

and all the while I am fighting a continual battle between needing more time to work, needing more money to budget better and pay off my loans, and needing more personal time to cook healthy meals and go for a long walk. These things cycle--and inevitably work wins, because it applies the most guilt, or money wins because it's easier to spend cheap money on fast food and save time as well than it is to take the time to get out of the car to get a salad and soup or an apple or some fish or something that isn't hamburger or fried. *sigh*. But too lazy to do any cooking, even though I have the makings for chili and soup in the fridge, ready and waiting for me to throw them in a pot or something.

I hate juggling all this. I hate the way my mind flits from one thing to another, and I hate the way nothing ever gets crossed off my to-do list. I hate how I try to save time to get work done and then a week or two later I feel horribly ridiculously stupidly fat, even though I know the primary thing that has changed has been my perspective and that I should (and sometimes do) love my body the way it is, and understand that the world is a fucked up place for not recognizing how atrociously it treats fat women. But then I just fall into the "how do we fix the world" cycle of thoughts, and I try to educate myself and  organize my webpage and... it all falls apart. It all gets messed up. Nothing is easy to fix and I won't drop my life to go fix it all so then I just bury my head in the sand for days reading books or watching DVDs and knitting and playing on the internet and when I come up, nothing is BETTER. It's all worse because I've ignored it, and I have no good sense of priorities or how to set reasonable goals because mine are never ever met. I feel like I've been late or incomplete to every deadline in my entire life. And this all only contributes to my crushingly low self-esteem, which makes me see this all as my fault, starts calling me names--until I beat it back down and plunge into work again, taking deep deep breaths and telling myself, "just concentrate on this one thing, just this one thing. Everything else can wait."

and it all starts over all again.

I like to plan knitting. it is part of the procrastinating cycle--it makes me feel successful to come up with plans for my knitting, because they can and frequently are accomplished in a reasonable period of time (unlike work or the house or family and friends or LIFE; I wouldn't blame it on knitting, I sucked at all those things even before I started knitting). I think this is why I like it--because I *can* feel successful at it, and it's a tangible success--unlike reading books, which I also enjoy but which is much more, "oh, I finished this book, so I can check this off my to-do list (that shelf of novels over there), but I can't share it with anyone." Maybe if reading had a website like ravelry where I could organize what I've read, what I have, and what I am going to read next, I would spend more time on it. But anyway, knitting--I like being able to plan it, then do it, and have it done.

So, my accomplishments for April are: Harvest Dew Socks; most of a pumpkin hat; the damned secret gift that took forever; another gift, smaller, three owls; and finishing ONE of my two mitts for my aunt. Also I've knit a lot of my Tiny Green Leaves--only 10 rows from the ending! huzzah!-- and about 70% of a pair of Spatterdash for a KAL on LSG. I am really glad I did the KAL because that's the only thing that's gotten me through such a fiddly pattern. There are a lot of tiny details and I am sure they make the thing all that much more kickass but they require a LOT of attention and frankly the thing is driving me nuts. I threw it on the bed last Friday and yelled, "fuck it I am DONE with you." I still have an edging, a feather-and-fan repeat or two, and two thumbs and two sets of I think 14 buttons which I haven't even picked out yet, and I just don't think they're going to happen by Monday, the deadline I set for the KAL. I'm not too regretful--they are cute and they got a lot further with a KAL than they would've if I'd done it on my own, and perhaps I can come back to them when I am less stressed out some time.


I have plans, though (as always) for May. I'm very much in a finishing mood. I want these Tiny Green Leaves done, and I want the second sock for my sister to be done (if she would get me those measurements I wrote down. GAH why did I mail them to her?), and I want the last buttons for the mitts to be done and I want my size 7 needles so I can finish this baby cardigan that's hibernating, and I want to finish a surprise for my oldest friend (though at this rate I'd best hand onto it for her birthday); and there's a pumpkin hat I knit that only needs a leaf or two added and its ends woven in, which would be nice. It's pleasant to be in a finishing mood; perhaps I will even put a skein or two into the giant blanket I thought I'd finish in December, or finish the second-to-last Knit It Forward 2011 project, or cast on the last one (gah. I should do that. Gah. I really should do that. It would be easy, I'm sure. I'm sure I can manage. Gah. I already have the yarn. I haven't picked a project though. Gah). But I want these things DONE so I can feel like I've accomplished SOMETHING--even if that something isn't in life but in knitting.


(and then of course I want to cast on 85 billion things for myself. But two or three of these things are things that I've personally desired for a very long time--a Shipwreck in my sea silk (no beads yet, but I've got time) and a pair of fingerless mitts in stranded colorwork using some black yarn and some black-and-blue-with-sparkles yarn for myself. They're going to be lovely and subtle once I pick out a pattern. Endpapers, perhaps?)


EDIT: now I know this isn't going to end well but I have so many plans about knitting and they keep running in circles in my head.... first finish the haruni, then the damned mitts for my aunt, then the spatterdash, then the pumpkin hat... then my sister's sock, then the baby cardigan--it's so close to done!--then the other gift mitts. simultaneously I want to cast on everything, everything--the shipwreck, endpapers for me, endpapers for my twin, another baby cardigan, a steeked throw that looks fantastic, robot mittens, a laceweight shawl, another laceweight shawl, a spiral circular shawl in scrap sock yarn, a plaid floaty clingy shawl in that uberfine mohair, a frost flowers shawl for a friend, a hex shawl that I have to reconfigure for much thicker gauge and much less yarn, I want to knit one hundred billion owls for everyone I know, I want to do a 198-yards-of-heaven in that copper colored linen, I want MORE stranded color mitts for me in chocolate cherry and black; I want to figure out a cardigan/wrap for me in my laceweight thunderstorm colored madelinetosh (have I shown you that? it's lovely), and do something lovely and textured with my madtosh dk, and did I mention I got madtosh vintage the other day? I didn't? I think it's going to be another pair of mitts for me, I'm not sure, I had so much in mind when I got it and now they're all gone, not sure what to turn it into. Oh and I need to figure out what to do with all this thick-n-thin yarn, the Trabajos Del Peru and the Di'Ve stuff from L.  Do you think it's a bad plan to do a highly-ribbed pullover in bamboo? is it going to stretch like no tomorrow and not hold the crimp of the ribbing? probably. I wonder if I could reinforce that in anyway. Ooo, more sock yarn on webs--what unique colors. And there's a sale on eco wool--that could match my local handspun brown wool that I got at the winter Madison Farmer's Market. Wasn't I going to make a striped and lace shawl out of that queensland rustic tweed that I picked up? and something laceweight with that brand new reddish sock yarn, and another pair of spatterdash (heaven help me) in my regia hand-dye effect. I bet a pair of Nutkins would look great with my solid sky blue yarn. I should rip back the half a sock I currently have and change it.

....
I can't believe how many of these things I want RIGHT NOW. doom.