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[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

you hear about recovery not being linear (”there are ups and downs”), but actually it’s more like a game of wack-a-mole. this is not a bad thing

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

to extend the metaphor: when you’re at the beginning of your recover (less kindly known as rock bottom), you have a garden full of moles. you have a mole popping up every 5 seconds, and maybe it’s the same hyperactive mole, maybe it’s a bunch of moles taking turns, but whether they all look the same, you have a garden full of the fuzzy bastards. 

so you pick up a mallet and start hitting. maybe you’re bad at using the mallet, maybe you get better over time, but after a while you get tired, bc you’ve been at it for ages and a mole is still popping up every 5, 10 seconds. what you don’t realize is, you’ve actually nerfed a lot of the moles. it’s just now there’s more space for the other ones to come to the surface and start making noise. but if you keep. swinging. the mallet. eventually they’re gonna slow down. 

My recovery began when I started treating my depression & moved away from an abusive environment. It took a long time for me to realize I was recovering, bc as soon as one thing improved, another popped up. As my depression improved, I became more alert and active–and discovered that my brain fog & self-isolation had inadvertently been covering up my sensory issues. I had enough energy to start school again–and bc I wasn’t sleeping & lounging all day, I was suddenly aware of my concentration issues. One mole bites the dust, another pops up. 

but the secret is: there are a finite number of moles in the universe. 

4 years I’ve been wacking away at these fuckers with a mallet. I’ve taken turns wacking depression and its cronies suicidal ideation & self-harm, followed in succession by previous dormant crap related to anxiety, adhd, spd, c-ptsd, and other 👎 acronyms. And behold: progress. (Atm i’ve finally convinced the furry piece of shit called Executive Dysfunction to come out of the ground, which is exciting bc wrangling this bastard means finally getting to work on longterm personal projects again.)  Moles still pop up from time to time, but my life has a lot more space for me in it

the moral of this story is: if u hit a mole over the head for long and hard enough eventually it learns to mind its own beeswax. KEEP WACKING

[kittenswchainsaws]

In pursuit of perfect ribbing

Anyone else's ribbing look neater on the wrong side than the right side?

My purls are f-ing beautiful on the wrong side due to the little yarn back tug I give them right after working a purl (I knit continental). It pulls the extra slack out of the stitch and is a trick I picked up from VeryPink Knits when I first started knitting. But it means that I have the opposite problem of a lot of continental knitters where my purls are smaller than my knits. In ribbing, the adjacent purls pull open my knit stitches, making my knits look bloated and laddery and making me die on the inside...

Yes, I use smaller needles for ribbing.  I’ve also tried combination knitting and doing the ribbing flat before joining in the round with no better results.  Working the ribbing flat was actually worse for me since BOTH sides ended up messy when alternating the purls side-to-side every time I turned my work. Normally, I resort to a twisted rib so everything is being pulled closed instead of open, but I do miss the full, squishy look of a traditional rib. How on earth do you get beautiful, even ribbing without machine knitting?

Lately I've been thinking about using a German Short Row (or would it be half a short row??) to change direction after completing the ribbing so that I can turn my work inside out! Something like:

Work ribbing in the round to desired length, work last stitch of ribbing as usual, turn work and turn inside out, yarn to front, slip last worked stitch over to right needle, pull working yarn over top of right needle until both legs of stitch are on top of needle, maintain tension and work around, knit both legs of short row stitch as one stitch when you get back to it and then just keep going with pattern from there.

Thoughts, feelings, cries of anguish?  Has anyone tried it?  Am I overthinking this?  What do you do to get ribbing that doesn’t make you cringe??

[kittenswchainsaws]

So I've been thinking...

Are...are the Weasleys poor because of Molly's yarn habit??

[knittingcelebs]

Knitting in literature: Leo Tolstoy

(Above: Sir Francis Grant, Knitting a Stocking, 1874)

“[...] a rapturously breathless cry of children’s voices filled the room. “Two, two!” they shouted. This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew, one out of the other, in the children’s presence.”

From Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869.

[kittenswchainsaws]

I got all caught up in the quote and felt breathless watching Anna pull the second stocking out of the first.

Magic!

[kittenswchainsaws]

I swear to god it sounds like my husband is standing over the toilet with the diaper sprayer... but hopefully he's actually squirting out the dumb that keeps making him challenge every restaurant to give him their spiciest menu items. 🌶🌶🌶 😭

[kittenswchainsaws]

Well, that's it.

I just submitted a job application with a typo in my own FIRST NAME.

Now I have to go legally change it before the interview.

[kittenswchainsaws]

I don't know who gave my toddler cocaine at 5am this morning...

but if I ever find them, I'm pretty sure I'm legally allowed to harvest their organs to finance my new kitchen. 😬

[kittenswchainsaws]

I cut apart my sweater to fix the yoke

Sharing some pictures of the recent sweater surgery I did to Caitlin Hunter’s Zweig in case one of you needs the inspiration like I did.  Sorry in advance: my pictures are not amazing and this is not a tutorial, just my long story.

I made this for a friend in CO and just really super-duper botched the tension on the triangles.  It was okay until I finished the lace.  Then the pucker showed up.  No way I was going to rip back all of that lace (the first I’d ever knit) so I kept going, especially since everyone told me it would probably be fine after blocking.

[ Voice over: But it was not.]

I finished the whole damn sweater and decided I could not live with sending it to my bestie like this:

From far away it's not shockingly obvious that the tension is way too tight at the top, but it's not GOOD either. Compared to the colorwork past the lace, the triangles look washed out and faded. Nope nope nopity nope!

Close up you can see why the colors just don’t look as rich.  The stitches are pulled so tight that you can see the white floats behind the purple triangles and too much gap in the white stitches making them shadowy instead of bright. I also used the Philosopher’s Wool technique to make this portion of the fabric completely woven (no floats) which exaggerated the poor tension, I think.  (Disclaimer: I’ve also used Philosopher’s Wool technique to work wonders- with proper tension...  Also, that woman’s enthusiasm is so contagious.  I just love her so much.)

So! I looked online for how to cut out the middle of a sweater and then graft it back together.  I had some trouble finding exactly what I wanted- I think most people are either experienced enough to notice the bad tension sooner than I did (I've been knitting less than a year) or most people aren't masochistic enough to do this to themselves with a finished project.  #whyamilikethis

Needed:

2 sets of circular needles and cables (or waste yarn for holding stitches)

Tapestry needle

Pattern (this doesn't work on rows with shaping- I had to pick up the row right before all of my m1 increases)

Picked up the stitches I intended to keep:

Cut the leg of one stitch somewhere a couple inches before the BOR I was keeping: gives me enough of a tail to weave in later #snipsnipMF

Then I used a tapestry needle to start unraveling the stitches that needed fixing. I wanted to keep some of this yarn for the kitchener stitch at the end, otherwise I would have just cut once at the top and once at the bottom to remove the entire section at once and saved myself some time.

Rejoined yarn to the neck and reknit the upper-most colorwork. At this point I am thinking, “Wow!  This is going so much faster than I expected.”  Like, 3 hours max to accomplish everything up to here. 

Here are the triangles reknit without Philosopher's Wool technique (couldn’t be bothered, I was in a hurry) and ready to be grafted back on with kitchener stitch:

Grafted back together with the kitchener.  Remember how surprised I was that this wasn’t taking longer?  IT TOOK ALMOST 3 HOURS JUST TO PUT THIS THING BACK TOGETHER.  Granted, I’ve never used the kitchener before and decided to try on a fingering weight PULLOVER.  #ialmostdied  At this point, the bottom row of the white triangles is a hot mess. Some stitches look like they are there on purpose and others look like they've been cannibalized by the sweater:

The yarn I salvaged earlier was still kinked and wavy in the guage I need for this section of the sweater. I tried to use that as a guide while sewing the kitchener, but it was even better when I used a tapestry needle and adjusted every single stitch around from beginning to end.  #analretentivelevelpretistige You know the drill- tug one leg and pull the slack into another. I removed a couple of inches of inconsistency from my kitchener work and it shows:

Hey hey!  How about that?  The color of my triangles looks bolder than it did before and their shapes are more consistent/less squishy and blobby.  Or at least iiiiiiii can tell the difference.  (Certain familial relations just kept telling me it looked fine before.  Lies and delusions.)  I wouldn’t say that it’s perfect now, but honestly this extra bit of work made me feel excited about sending it to my bestie instead of cringey, which was what I felt every time I looked at it before.

The two tutorials that really helped me work up the courage to do this are:

Grafting 911 - How to save your knitting with kitchener stitch

How to Add Length to a Knit Sweater

I hope somebody finds this helpful.  That second tutorial popped up in my feed right when I needed it to and so I took the plunge.  100% worth learning. 

[kittenswchainsaws]

My son, frightened: Daddy, why is mommy smiling like that?!

Daddy: Because she just finished the all over C2F C2B 'X' pattern on that sweater so now it's just "2 BY-RIBBING FROM HERE ON OUT, BABY!"

[kittenswchainsaws]

Dear Husband: I don't need your criticism, I need your help.

[kittenswchainsaws]

Took my 2.5 yo to my cousin's wedding.

Officiant: we are gathered here to join cousin to cousin's awesome fiance in holy matrimony. Thanks for coming ya'll. You may now be seated.

My 2.5 yo into the dead silence: THE END!

Everyone else, especially me: lmao

[kittenswchainsaws]

My boss just emailed an inspirational quote to everyone this morning:

“Every morning you have a new opportunity to become a happier version of yourself.”

....are they TRYING to get me to quit?

[kittenswchainsaws]

Hump Day Last: My sister had to reassure me that when OJ (my 2 yo) was older, she would buy me a nerf gun. This is because I confessed in the toy isle to having absolutely no self-control and knew that I would shoot my child with said nerf gun repeatedly and without mercy. I laughed when I confessed. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. But I don't want to be held accountable for the terrible behavior my actions would produce in him and know I must therefore avoid projectile toys for as long as possible...

I am somehow managing to be my son's mom friend and older sibling friend all at once... Just yesterday, we both thought it would be a great idea to play chase through the house after I'd spun him in circles. He stumbled once after I set him down carefully (I was there to catch him), shook it off like a pro and then dashed down the hallway at full speed, impressing me mightily, until he bounced off a door frame and went down laughing.

But worst of all, I will have no one to blame but myself when my one-day teenaged son embarks on a gleeful mission to literally make me pee my pants (won't be hard- a good sneeze will almost do it already...) by popping out of nowhere like a demonic dimension-hopping rabbit at every opportunity since I started doing the same thing to him at 9 months. It is his favorite game in the world now. There is no hope for either one of us.

I can't fucking wait.

[kittenswchainsaws]

His Trolliness,

the 2 YO, just shuffled out of the bathroom with his pants around his ankles, carrying his potty bucket full of pee and threatened to take a drink from it by bringing it to his mouth while making eye contact with us. Apparently, he is not as excited about his being able to pee independently as Mom and Dad are. No one racing to the bathroom to be with him while he pees or poops is a situation that must be remedied. 2 YOs, man.

[kittenswchainsaws]

Magic Breaks, last chapter

Kate Daniels talking to Papa Roland:  I leaned forward.

Me:  Yes, for the third time in four pages.  If you lean forward any more you’re gonna fall on the floor, Kate.

Just kidding, Ilona Andrews- I love your books!  Hahahahabutseriously

[kittenswchainsaws]

Damnit, KFAM

I'm trying to watch 6 Undergeound, but every time Ryan Reynolds says, "Hit it..." I start singing:

Aaarchie's Pomchi Palace

Aaarchie's Pomchi Palace

AAARCHIE'S POMCHI PALACE!

jazz hands- yeah!

[kittenswchainsaws]

Me 6 months ago: HTF can people have so many projects cast on at once? I'm gonna start and finish one project at a time.

Me in October: Holy shit christmas is com- ooohhhhhhnowigetit

Me now: ......................I'm gonna need another set of Chiagoos...