A Little Help From My Friends

When I was a teenager, my route into the house after school was around the back, across the deck, and through the sliding door. One day, I came home to find  a rope strung across the entrance to the deck. I didn’t feel like walking all the way back around to the front of the house, so I ducked under the rope and finished the last three yards of my trip home from school.

My father, it turned out, was sitting in the living room, reading the paper and drinking his coffee. He wanted to know why I’d ignored the rope.

“I couldn’t figure out why it was there,” I said.

My father pointed out that the deck was darker than it had been that morning, that he’d spent most of the day staining it, and my decision to ignore the rope was now permanently recorded on the downstairs carpet.

We could attribute this to the fact that I was fourteen years old at the time, but the truth is I’ve always been the person who needed to find out, first-hand, just how hot that stove is, whether that paint is still wet, if that man-eating tiger is really asleep. The number of times I’ve actually been eaten by that tiger haven’t outbalanced the times that I haven’t. And this is why I thought I could get away with using Debbie Bliss Cashmerino for a steeking project.

Of course, Eunny Jang’s instructions for the Deep-V Argyle Vest make it clear that one should only use a single-variety yarn, and that superwash yarns won’t hold up to steeking, but I thought I could, you know, get around that. After all, I’m the guy who ripped out three inches of an Aran cardigan, fixed a mistake, and slipped all the stitches back on to the needle, all inside of a 25-minute commute on BART. During rush hour. Surely I could figure out a way to get a combination of merino, cashmere, and microfiber to hold together after I cut it all up with scissors, right?

Well, what you see in the picture above is my ass being saved by Bugamor, who works at my local yarn shop. Bugamor possesses a great deal of skill with a sewing machine—skill that I’m (conspicuously) lacking. And it wasn’t just my ass she saved. As the steeked edges began to unravel, this vest became the most cursed project I’d ever knit. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the bag I’d hidden it in, lest my soul be filled with the darkest, heaviest weight this side of the river Styx. Bugamor, and her sewing machine, dispelled the curse.

Of course, I still have to sew down those steeked edges, weave in the yarn ends, and block the m***er f***er. But aside from all that, it’s pretty much done. Next up? Making a rock climbing rope using I-cord! Just because it’s never been done doesn’t mean you can’t do it! I’ll even use 100% wool this time!

By the way, you may have noticed a few changes around here. After three and a half years (!!!) I decided it was time for a new look.

From The Department of Official Retractions

I’m not too big on advertising. In any form. I don’t even like that my pants come with tags on the outside, which amounts to free advertising for whichever clothing company was lucky enough to get my dollar. (It’s actually worse than free advertising. After all, I paid them.) I only own three t-shirts with writing on them: my Yo La Tengo shirt, my Tip Top Bike Shop shirt, and this shirt, which my friend A gave me. My body isn’t a billboard, and neither is my blog.

Except when I plugged The Knit Kit. Which brings us  to why I should have kept to my initial policy.

As I mentioned earlier, Z pre-ordered two of these as soon as she learned about their imminent availability. I’m sorry to say that, in the month since I wrote that effusive post, both of our Knit Kits have failed. On mine, the row counter lock developed a habit of unlocking when the button got pushed, which is the knitters equivalent of someone busting into your car and switching the brake with the accelerator. On Z’s Knit Kit, the tape measure no longer retracts, and the lock on her row counter fared the same fate as mine.  I’ve heard multiple reports of the row counter button breaking off after only a few days of use. Z contacted the Knit Kit folks about a replacement several weeks ago, but despite a promise on their website to respond within 24 hours, she has yet to hear back from them.

The Knit Kit is a great idea, so this is a bit of a disappointment. My advice? Wait for The Knit Kit v. 2.0.

(ST)EEK!

As a new parent, one of my most common activities is looking for evidence that my brain is still working. There isn’t much of it, to be sure. The only book I’ve finished since M and S arrived is The Best American Comics 2006; all of my Harper’s from the last five months are sitting, unread, in a pile on my nightstand; I let my subscription to The New York Review of Books lapse, unintentionally at first, and then quite intentionally. I’m incapable of doing the most basic arithmetic in my head, I’m overly reliant on my spell checker, I’ve left my grocery list at home on at least three different occasions, and were it not for union protection, I’d probably have been fired from my job by now. My twins are creating a bazillion new neurons every minute, but I’m losing them at the same rate. At least the ones that aren’t propped up by caffeine.

Which makes this a perfect time to learn a new knitting skill! This is what I’m telling myself, because if I can learn a new skill, it’ll show that at least some part of my cerebral cortex is still operating at pre-twin levels. So what technique have I decided to tackle?  The one in which you actually take a scissors to your knitting and cut it into pieces. To this end, I’ve just completed the knitting portion of Eunny Jang’s Deep-V Argyle Vest.

Now, in my mind, steeking isn’t an actual knitting techinque. It’s an anti-technique. Like committing suicide by holding one’s breath, there are certain things that humans are simply not able to do. Steeking seems like it ought to be in this category. I mean, the photograph above represents weeks of two-strand color work. I’m supposed to cut that up? Crikey!

The purple stitches are the reinforcements for the future edges of the v-neck. There are three more sets; both armholes and the back of the neck. They were done with the stiffest, stickiest wool I could find in my stash. Eunny Jang’s instructions are fantastic, and she’s done everything one can do to assuage the fears of the novice steeker, but I’m still not ready. So I’m going to knit a quick swatch, set the steeks, and cut. Let’s see what happens.

Holycrap, it actually worked. Z even tugged on it to see if any ends would come loose. They didn’t. But does this mean I’m ready to cut the steeks in the actual sweater? We’re about to find out. Meanwhile, as a stalling technique, I’ve looked up “steek” in my Oxford English Dictonary, and the first definition is quite revealing:

1. a cask of wine

Clearly, this definition has everything to do with knitting. If you’ve ever done any steeking yourself, you know that it’s a piece of advice for how to approach your first cut. I’m not a big fan of wine, though. I’ll be stiffening my resolve with something else.

WTF is WFTP?

So I’ve been a low-level website designer for a little while now. By “low-level” I mean that I’ve worked mostly for friends, or friends of friends, and I’ve told myself that my development skills weren’t thorough enough to be a “real” web designer.

A couple of months ago, I was brainstorming with a friend about various ways to make more money, now that I have two little ones to support. I’ve been working  part-time as an admin in the Ob/Gyn department at UCSF for a while now, and while the health insurance is awesome, the paycheck is . . . well, you know how that goes. Anyway, my friend asked me about the websites I’ve done, so I told her.

“You’re not doing this for money right now?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.

Okay, so she didn’t really call me an idiot, but nevertheless, my idiocy is ending now. I’m officially introducing . I make websites that don’t mess around. If you like the way Yarn Boy looks, and you like the rest of my work, then pass on the word. You’ll be doing my twins a good turn.