oh lolli lolli lolli lollipop lollipop
Socks on the needles, finally! I bought some sock yarn from a friend and it’s lovely (there’s more here if you’re interested). It’s Opal Lollipop 1012 and I can now say that I am no longer an Opal virgin. Did I already say the yarn is lovely? Because it is, it really is lovely. Here are two of my favorite details of the sock in progress …
(a) the all green picot, and
(b) the beautiful heel flap.
I’m going to do something a little unusual around here and venture outside of Knitting Land. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to Knitting Land by the end of the post, I promise. I have something to show ya’ll that I hope you like, so read on or skip to the end. Whatever.
I’ve been really busy this semester with several never-ending projects from Frustration Island, projects that eat up all of my scheduled lab time and almost all of my free time (Do you have any idea how many days I had to wait to watch Heros (next week looks awesome, by the way) because I don’t get home from school until bedtime most nights? I’m currently working on a microphone / speaker circuit. I started the testing portion of the lab by frying one of my transistors – I forgot to place a resistor between the transistor and the negative power supply. As soon as I noticed the smell of melting components, I turned off the power supply and went to pull the transistor from the circuit. Should you ever find yourself in that position, do not touch the transistor immediately. I have a tiny little blister on my index finger as a reminder. Fucker was much hotter than I expected. Then, I looked at my circuit and the big mess it had become. I decided to move things around and arrange it so that the first half is on one side of my bread board and the second on the other. I disconnected the speaker portion of the circuit to test that I had set up the microphone portion of the circuit correctly. I noticed that my negative power supply was off by a few volts. I instinctively cranked the knob to obtain the right voltage. Oops. I blew up one of my electrolytic capacitors. The big bang and horrid smell caused heads to pop up over the cubicle walls like little prairie dogs. Having blown up my first capacitor, I think I’m going to encase it in plastic and put it on a cutesy scrapbook page titled “KA-BOOM!”
Warning: Gratuitous capacitor gore below. Viewer discretion is advised.
Now leaving Frustration Island with a quick layover in La Gata Malo Ciudad. The Mr. and I are big pushovers when it comes to the cuteness that is her shitty-ness. We only have two rules: (i) no biting of the humans, and (ii) no kitty on the tall kitchen surfaces, i.e., the table and the counters. In our initial Kally training days, we tried to use the water bottle method without success. She’s too damn fast. Our vet suggested we use canned air. It worked wonderfully. All we had to do was ruffle her fur and she blamed the air can. For a long time, empty air cans were placed where we didn’t want a kitty or any kitty help. We reached the point where she refused to jump on the table or counter despite our coaxing. Success. Or so we thought. The other day, the Mr. came home and found shitty kitty sleeping on the counter, puffy face and all. Bad shitty kitty.
Whose bad?
Now we’re back to Knitting Land. I’ve been working on a bit of a secret project for a little one whom we’ll call Ramona. Ramona is my grandmother’s middle name (Eliza Ramona) and I like her middle name much more than my own. I’ve often thought of legally changing my middle name to Ramona. I’ve also thought of tattooing several stars across my back, but always chickened out. I’m pretty sure changing my name will fall into the same category. So, here’s Ramona along with a close up of the buttons:
Some Babies’ Things (February) from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac
Mission Falls 1824 Wool Color 534 Rhubarb
Did ya’ll enjoy the journey?
