The End of the Corset Tank is the Beginning of the Lover’s Knot Afghan

It’s done! I finished! I didn’t add a contrast color, because I only have two colors in the super soft bamboo yarn, and the second doesn’t really go with the pink, but it looks great. I even attached the straps and it fits just perfectly and it’s ready to go! I did change the number of stitches CO, because it seemed really short--even for me, which is totally crazy! But it looks great and I couldn’t be prouder of myself. Now I’m on to the next project: a Lover’s Knot Afghan. I hate afghans, but this one is really cool--much better than the huge granny square my mom crochets and calls an afghan or the other horrible crocheted afghans in the world. I love cables, and this is full of them. I’ve already restarted it four times, but I think this time, it is going to be great. It’ll make a great gift.

I love Wednesdays

Wednesday is a very special day to me. It could be the reason I live--maybe a stretch, but maybe not, either. When I was growing up, Wednesday was my “Special Person Day,” which totally rocked because on Wednesday, I got to choose what we watched on TV (Cosby Show, right?) and I got to use the Special Person spoon--which was the prettiest, shiniest spoon in the house, and my parents were more lenient on the cleanliness of my room. And various other perks like getting to ride shotgun if only one parent was in the car, stuff like that. Wednesday was a celebration of me--kind of like having a mini birthday every week. I absolutely adore celebrating myself, so having a Special Person Day all to myself is perfect. And it’s right in the middle of the week! Just enough to get you through the rest of the week and to the weekend.

When I became an adult and moved out on my own (always with tons of roommates at college), I would celebrate my Special Person Day in various ways--not do my homework one Wednesday, go out to eat, call in sick to work and watch a movie, but most of the time, I would pick up a thick shake or a large Hogi Yogi. Just to remember how wonderful my life really is and how great it is “to be me.”

And now that I am an old adult and have graduated from college and have a decent full-time job, I get to celebrate my Special Person Day once more. I get a 4-day work week, and Wednesday is my extra day off. I still get up at the same time because the only time I need an alarm to get me up is for work. And when I get up on Wednesdays, I feel like a kid sneaking around the house before everyone is up, snooping for treats and fun things to do--it is so exhilarating. I watch the Morning Show with Mike and Juliet because I only watch channel 13 (because I am afraid to change the channel because I may forget or not be able to change it back for the very highlight of my day). I don’t always watch Mike & Juliet, and I certainly don’t pay attention to it all, because I watch while I play Hate Town, occasionally I’ll be cleaning or doing laundry or something else, but most of the time, I play Hate Town in the morning until noon when it’s time for The League of Justice! That’s right. I spend five hours of my day off watching Judge Alex, Cristina’s Court, Divorce Court, Judge Joe Brown, and Judge Judy. I get a lot of knitting done because I cannot watch TV without knitting. And then, after Judge Judy, I’ll leave it on for about 20 minutes or so of the news, and then either go back to Hate Town or really do some cooking and cleaning.

I always hope that Michael won’t get home until after the 5 o’clock news is over, but he always gets home early, usually before Judge Joe Brown is over. That makes me sad because I love to be able to do all of those things and then have a little bit of time to get everything cleaned and organized before he gets home.

But today is a little bit different, Michael and I are both sick--I’m getting better after being bed-ridden for a week, and he’s starting to get really sick, perhaps even as bad as I was--so he’s in bed right now and I am making bread for us to eat with our soup. It’s really nice that we don’t have to go outside today. I may not even make him take out the garbage because he is so sick. It can wait another day. So, today, I will get him soup and orange juice and bread and water while he lies in bed, playing his DS and reading or whatever he wants to do, and I will go about my regular Wednesday activities as much as possible and then go to bed early.

KIC

I know that so many people have very strong opinions about knitting in church. I don't. I could take it or leave it. If you knit in church, fine, if you don't, fine. I don't see a problem with it as long as it is quiet and doesn't go all over. Let me rephrase. I have no problem with knitting in any meetings at church when other people do it. And in Sacrament, if you keep it quiet and yarn doesn't roll all over the chapel, I don't have a problem with that, either. I bring my knitting to church every Sunday. I get it out on occasion after church while I wait for Michael to finish all of the things he has to do. Every week, I sit in church and think about all of the knitting I could be doing and wonder if knitting will help me pay more attention to the speakers. And every week, I wish I were knitting while my knitting remains inside my bag.

I don't know why I can't just get out my project and work quietly. There is no way it could be more distracting than the many people sleeping, whispering, pawning their kids off on other people, chasing kids down the aisles and up on the pulpit, or trying to quiet screaming children. I could just keep to myself and quietly feel a little more productive as I listen to the millionth talk about not sucking by relying on yourself and not expecting everyone else to carry you and your burdens all the time, especially when you get yourself into deep financial debt (I live in an area of low socio-economic status). And Michael and I have a deal. If the speaker doesn't quote scripture, general authority, or state the topic of his talk in the first three minutes, Michael is allowed to get out his DS and play because the talk will be a waste of his time. That's right. Valuable time he could spend gaming. However, with knitting, it could help me stay occupied enough to endure really paying attention to every speaker, even the ones who mumble through or never even prepared a talk and so ramble on and on. I do ask Michael to keep his DS down so it doesn't disturb anyone and it has to be on silent, of course.

But I absolutely hate how everyone comes up and asks what I'm making and then looks completely nonplussed and kind of like I am a freak of nature when I say, "a handbag" or "a scarf" or "a hat". A knitted handbag? How does that work? But could you teach me to knit? I really need to learn to do that. And it's all lip service and I can't tell if they mean it or they just think they need to say it. I don't care if they don't notice my existence at all--well, a "hello" or something would be nice, but I mean they don't have to notice the fact that I am knitting. I would actually prefer for no one to notice, I think. I just want to knit. I am not fishing for attention. I am just trying to make the idle time I spend waiting a little more productive.

Update on the Corset Tank

Blah. I had to take it all apart. But I'm sure it will be better next time, and it will go so much faster because I know what I'm doing now. So I'm starting on a different project this evening. I'm going to start on the Lover's Knot afghan this evening. Maybe I'll actually finish it this time...

Provisional Cast-on

That’s right. You heard it here first. I learned to do a provisional cast-on. And, what’s more, it worked! I picked up the stitches again with no problem. I thought it would be so hard because it’s an “advanced” technique, but wow, was it ever easy! I am so proud of myself. I am just so good at this game!

I am knitting a bamboo corset-style tank. I think I’m going to have to take it apart and redo it. I’m following the pattern (with minor size adjustments because I’m so little), but it’s still huge! I couldn’t find the yarn I was supposed to use because it doesn’t exist anymore. But now, I’m almost halfway done (hence using the stitches from the provisional cast-on) and I am really seeing that It seems like it will be big. But it is so beautiful and soft. It’s lotus pink Bernat bamboo yarn--86% bamboo with a little acrylic and polyester. I could just touch it all day. I’m really excited to finish the project. Especially since it will be the very first thing I’ve made for myself that I will ever wear. And I think I will wear it a lot. I wear tanks every day, and this one would probably be my Saturday tank. And I learned shaping and provisional cast-on--things that are so useful in everyday life.

Things I Love about Work (there are a lot, I promise!)

I guess I feel like I have to explain that I really do love my job. I promise. It isn't the work, necessarily, and it certainly isn't the upper management. It's all of the kids I work with. I love all of the people who work in our office room. We work in a room inside of the warehouse and we have a lot of opportunities for bonding. If nothing outside of our room existed, we would have the greatest time at work.

Joel will give us an Aicha All-request Power Hour a couple times a week. It starts with Gellieman singing "Aicha" and ends with Liam Lynch singing "United States of Whatever" and in the middle are all of the songs we can think to request. They usually have a theme--which is so much fun. I love the themes of the Power Hours. And I am always so impressed with the musical knowledge in our room. Those are good times.

We have potlucks and treats all the time. It was easier when there were fewer of us, but we would always have someone carry in treats and we have potlucks quite frequently. More recently, we've been having themed potlucks. Oktoberfest (lots of delicious German food), soup potluck-amazing!, and a cookie potluck were a few of the things we've done. And I love the assortment of treats we always have.

Watching things with snaps. Not all of us have speakers/sound on our computer, so we will watch things with snaps. We will all queue up whatever youtube video we choose to watch and Jordan snaps out the rhythm and we all click "play" together and Joel will use his speakers. In the month of October, we watched so many episodes of the Haunting. Really good stuff. We watch music videos, clips of reality shows, cooking shows. If there is something to watch, I love watching it with snaps.

Pictures of kittens/puppies/other baby animals get passed around all day every day. I have seen some really adorable things. Cuteoverload.com is now a frequent stop for me.

It is important to always check my horoscope--how else would I know that Mark is going to come down to the warehouse today? Or that if I were running for president today, I would be elected on the spot?

I have learned more about pop culture than I ever cared to know. Tacky Paris Hilton, the misunderstood Britney Spears, the diva Mariah Carrey, any new movies that are coming out, basically any wayward popstar there is to know about, I hear about at work. And I love every moment of it.

There are so many other things that I just love. It would be impossible to encapsulate the joy of working at Overstock.com in just one short post.

My Little Rant--mostly on Mark (Sorry, Mark)

I love my job. I need to get that out of the way before I totally hate on it (I don't think I ever really hate on my job, but just in case you think I do. I really do love it. I am a product-flow copywriter at Overstock.com. I also dabble in SEO, I suppose. It is a really repetitive, useless job only made fun by the friendships forged in the copywriting room. Basically, I write product descriptions in bullet-point form for items we sell onsite. Not too hard and usually not too tedious. My boss freaks out at the slightest "crisis" and calls for mandatory overtime if there is even one item description left over at the end of the day. But then, if we get done too fast, he makes us all go home early. He is pretty two-faced and only cares about saving his own hide and how things reflect on him. He doesn't care about quality work in the slightest--only quantity. So sucky writers who can't follow formatting guidelines or remember even basic grammar rules are rewarded while those of us who work really hard and pick up slack are punished for not being as productive. When Mark freaks out, we all freak out because it means that Mark will start "editing" our work. How it works is I write a SKU (description) and then it is approved by whoever bought the product or an assistant to whoever bought it, then it is sent back to the copywriters and someone else edits the SKU for grammar, punctuation, formatting, and html. A pretty basic process, but Mark thinks that editing doesn't really mean anything, so he just passes things without looking at them. So horrible things get onsite--misspellings and wrong html are only the tip of the iceberg. That is my grievance with Mark. He is a high school dropout who worked for years as a truck driver, an unruly drunk with several misdemeanors, and a manager of McDonalds who doesn't understand that the creative writing process is different from frying up fries. He started working at Overstock as the guy in the warehouse who decides whether the pallets can be reused or if they have outlived their usefulness. He was promoted to manager of the creative department because of his managerial experience--that's right. At McDonald's.

Sometimes I feel really bad that I just can't respect him and the more I see him function, the less I can respect him. He just doesn't understand that educated people generally have a good work ethic and care about quality.

As a person, he is a decent enough guy, but as a boss, he doesn't even understand how to do the job he is supposed to be managing. It is bad. And really frustrating. I mean, he is a nice guy and when he's talking to me, I know that he cares about us and everything. He isn't going to just fire us all or tell us where to get off because he knows that we're good kids and everything. Dealing with him in person, I guess, is much better than trying to deal with the idea of him behind his back.

So this is where I am now with my job: we just passed the busy season where we were on mandatory overtime. Then, Mark said that we wouldn't have mandatory overtime as long as we each worked at least 50 hours (10 hours of overtime)--so we can only not have mandatory overtime as long as we do it voluntarily. Then, we came to the slower season when everything was already onsite for the holidays and Mark started asking us all to go home early. I have already finished all of the work that is available for the day (until the afternoon report comes out about an hour or two before I go home), so I am writing this rant on the horrors of working for Overstock.com. A decent enough place to shop, but a horrific place to work (unless you work in the Creative department in our little copy room in the warehouse).

Making a blog is fun to do, fun to do, to do, to do

Some things need to be documented. Like how much time a day I spend eating treats, knitting, and watching DVDs. As of this moment, I have four totally out-of-control boxes of yarn in the family room and Michael rolls his eyes and sighs every time he sees them. I know it. I see it on his face and in the way he tries so hard to not look at this half of the room. When I'm not knitting, I'm searching through new patterns and yarns online. And when I'm not doing that, I am playing Hate Town.

Now that Christmas is over, I have a bit more time to just do what I want to do in regards to knitting, playing and eating treats.

Today's knitting experience will include: working on a pretty scarf for my brother-in-law's Christmas gift and maybe dabbling in the intense pattern of my sister's handbag.
Today's treat experience will include: delicious truffles and macadamia nut chocolates from the Swiss Colony. I've ordered every year forever. It's delicious and fun.
Today's Hate Town experience will include: checking the mail. I love that! Playing Leota (my 77 holy paladin) to level 78. I am so happy to be able to fly in Northrend. Hate Town is totally the funnest game ever!

While I was working so hard to get all of the Christmas treats, gifts, etc. ready, I neglected Hate Town for weeks. And, I am sorry to say, I didn't really miss it. But then, Michael and I played last night, and it was so much fun. I had forgotten how fun it can be. I love to play Hate Town with Michael.