Tag: Knitting

thursday the pug (and other accouterments)

thursday
Dear Internet,
Meet Thursday the pug.
How she came into my possession: after Wednesday died on February 1, 2014, TheExHusband1 made the executive decision not to get another dog for awhile so we could enjoy “time together,” which as most of you know did not pan out. (He now believes if he would have let me get another pug we would still be married. I don’t know how I feel about this statement but I do think maybe my life would have changed significantly if that had happened. )
Since I was hopping across the US for the last year, getting a dog seemed impossible but it was on the list of things to do once I get settled. TEH suggested getting another pug would help my cycling since I would then have something stable in my life. I applied to two local pug rescues, was interviewed by both (and references checked). Within a week of acceptance of one, they contacted me as a 2.5 yo fawn female named Molly who just came into their possession and was available. She’s a pure breed bred to be a show dog candidate or as a breeding dog. She’s cage trained, house trained, and is probably one the most active pugs I’ve ever met. (She will walk a mile before she pees. Hello weight loss.) I’ve renamed her Thursday and in the 48 hours I’ve had her, she’s stolen my heart.2

Other accouterments:
tardishat
I’ve been knitting like a fiend. I finished a scarf, a cowl (of my own design), and the above repeating TARDIS beanie (pattern here) within the space of about a week and a half. I’ve had requests to do the beanie for other people (I’m just charging them for the cost of the yarn), so that’s going to keep me busy for the next few weeks.

USPS and I have been having words about the holiday cards. First they were sent back and USPS demanded another .22 cents to compensate for the unusual size. After sending out those cards, another stack came back with demands the envelopes were too small, then a third stack came back, the ones with the added postage, with the same bitchin’ about the too small envelopes. I found a pattern online for USPS approved envelopes and handmade nearly 40 of them and shipped them out. People have been reporting the cards are coming through just fine this time around, which to be honest thank fuck because I’ve had it up to my knee caps with this USPS business.

I aced, I think, my phone interview with the Connecticut university and I hope to hear from them sometime this week about a second interview if they are following the plan they laid out on recruitment. My in-person interview with the Louisville college is this upcoming week and I’m a titch nervous. I’ve started working on my presentation, which will be 30-45 minutes long, last week which is so unusual for me as I’m typically a wait to the last minute kind of girl.
All appendages crossed something comes out of the two in terms of a job offer.

I’ve been writing in a paper journal these last few weeks rather than updating here. When I’m writing here, as open as people think I am, I self-censor a lot. Mostly I repeat a lot of things over and over in the paper journal which goes back to how I work things out. I try to go through and look at things at every angle and work out the hows, whys, and the possible outcomes. It makes my brain and myself feel better on what has gone down AND I can free write. I finally filled a journal I have been carrying around for the last five years, starting on journal number two. Journal number two was purchased last year to work out who I wanted to be with (TheBassist or TheExHusband) and I decided to keep those pages in as a reminder not everything can be boiled down to black and white. There are always a lot of grays in the world.
It’s also a good reminder sometimes feelings are just that – feelings. It’s not about being bipolar or having some mental deficit but about being human. Sometimes there is joy, sometimes there is heartache, and all of the time you are living.

I’ve been keeping up with my work out mentioned a few weeks ago, with week four starting this week. It’s two minutes at easy walking pace and then the pace is nearly doubled for six minutes resulting in eight minute sets until I hit the two mile mark, five times a week. I’m working up a sweat, which is a very good thing considering I have to work twice as hard to generate even a glisten. I’ve cut out the sugar and reined in the dairy, though I’ve cheated on the dairy because pizza! (Have you had vegan cheese? It’s an abomination unto the good lord.) Due to these changes, I’ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks. I’ll keep on this until after the holidays and then start with the calorie count.
A post has been started with pictures of me at my heaviest weight (with a side and frontal view) to track how my body looks with every 25 or so lost pounds. TEH was very adamant this was a bad idea for unspecific reasons. When I find posts like this on blogs, I love the inspiration they give for me to want to do better on my exercising and eating habits. Fuck’em.

I’ve started seeing a clinician a few weeks ago and there is currently a kerfuffle with my scripts: I’m covered with insurance instead of a co-pay, I’m getting the full cost of the drugs when I go to pick them up. The pharmacy keeps rejecting the script with the nonsense I’m not active in my insurance (false) and my clinician is not authorized to prescribe in Kentucky (also false). This struggle has been on going for the last two weeks and it’s frustrating as fuck. Thankfully I have/had nearly a month’s script left for me to make it through until this gets settled. I cannot and will not go drug free again.
The clinician and I are having words about Klonopin: He says it’s addictive, rattling off loads of celebrities who have died from Klonopin abuse, and I’ve proven I can handle the script just fine as my current script is from November 2014. I cannot imagine my world without Klonopin though he says he will give me a non-benzo version of an anti-anxiety drug. As of this week, I’ve got him talked into giving me a script of Klonopin in the next few weeks if ONLY THE FUCKING PHARMACY WOULD STOP DICKING AROUND.
The clincian requested blood work from me after my first appointment and the results came back: I scored perfect on thyroid, cholesterol, live and kidney functions, and I’m not pre-diabetic (which continues to shock me since both sides of my family have diabetes going back to the dawn of time). He said he’s never seen anyone with such excellent numbers on anything before.
SUCK IT FAT HATERS.
In other mental health news, I have my first appointment with my therapist on Monday which, thank fuck, I need so much. There is only so much exorcising one can do in digital and print journals. Plus getting a third point of view into my life who is not directly involved will be awesome.
This mental health check-up has prompted me to add contacting the DBSA sometime this week to start attending their regular meetings.

Who knew I had so much to say?
xoxo,
Lisa
1.TEH and I are not back together. There was some concern as I’m crashing at his pad I jumped back into a relationship with him. Have not and no intention to do so. The money I’m borrowing is going to be paid back once I get a job. Pinky swear.
2. If you want to increase your friend likes on any social media site, add cute photos of animals. True facts.

This Week in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2011, 1998

indefatigable

And I’ve been looking for my truth
Since God was a boy Guy Garvey

Dear Internet,
I’m taking a break from making holiday cards as there is only so many pithy messages one can write before the hand gets tired. The breakfast bar looks as if Michael’s has thrown up glitter and paper everywhere. I’ve received so many responses for the cards I closed down the form because a girl can only make so many damned cards. What is surprising me the most is I have not sliced a finger with the Exacto knife or glued things together that are not paper.
Edit: I’ve made all the damned cards and have loads of extras. If you want a card, go to bit.ly/HolidayCards2015.
I’ve been getting back into crafting again to help quell my brain and the satisfaction having a finished product made by oneself. I started with coloring this summer, moved on to knitting again when I found my knitting supplies. This, of course, meant I had a ton of projects started and no idea now who or what said projects are for. I tore each project back to a ball of yarn, using said yarn to knit myself a long scarf. Nothing fancy, just a garter stitch back and forth. I forgot how to fucking purl, cast on, and cast off. These are all simple stitches and if it were not for kind friends on Facebook and YouTube, L-ville would hear the brunt of my swearing on why I could not do what I had mastered so long ago.
A million and half years ago (2010 –  2012) I ran an Etsy shop, Excessively Diverting. I sold handcrafted holiday bulbs, pins, bookmarks, and other trinket specializing in out of copyright books and authors such as Jane Austen, the Bronte’s, Charles Dickens, and so forth and so on.
The shop was successful but the time & cost could not justify keeping the shop open as the majority of sales came during October, November, and December. When breaking down the wholesale cost of making the items and I was paying myself $0 per hour to keep prices competitive, meant I was barely breaking even. I kept all of the templates and other similar items in a box for said store re-opening sometime in the future, but I don’t even have a permanent place to live so that’s not happening anytime soon.
Back to crafting! I also do cross-stitch, which has been slow going. I started a project of matryoshka doll style Avengers ages ago as gift for someone I now have no idea who for. Captain America and the Hulk were finished before I realized I had fucked up the dimensions. That project is just hanging out in one of my craft boxes for something as I do not want to waste what I have already completed.
Then there is the holiday cards, which I’ve been steadily working on for the last week. I was perusing Etsy, Amazon, and other sites for cards to send this year, as you do, when TheExHusband suggested I make the cards instead. This is marvelous idea as I owned most of the major supplies required and all I needed to purchase was paper and a few colored glitter gel pens to finish the cards. Buying office supplies? Oh twist my arm. I have a large vintage tackle box chock full of pens of all sorts (gel, glitter, fountain), colored art pencils for the coloring, nibs and ink for said fountain pens, highlighters for paper and otherwise, drawing marks, and disposable calligraphy pens. Then there is my notebook collection which has grown so large, I have at least on packing box filled to the brim.
One could say I have a fetish for office supplies.

It’s been a couple of days since I started this entry, not finishing it as I didn’t really haven’t the heart. TheSads are again attacking, which probably amounts for and while TEH has been great on cheerleading me on to not dwell, but when you hurt, everything hurts: brain, body, emotions, feelings. Every change in inflection from whoever sends a cavalcade of feels from my brain to my toes.
It’s in that particular space I don’t want to be touched or spoken to. I want to do my thing (crafting, reading, watching TV, whatever) because I don’t have to think when I do these things. This is where I can not worry about my actions, my words, my being intrusive to someone else. It’s where the crying jags come, less frequently now but still appear nevertheless.
The non-touching part can be problematic when you’re around people who simply care about you and want you to feel better.
A friend on the Facebooks shared a mantra, of sorts,
momentofsuffering-web
Which has been a gods-send for me to remember that TheSads are a part of life, are not permanent and will leave at some point.

Yet a couple more days have passed since the above update. TheSads lasted all of one day, where I soaked TheExHusband’s shirt with tears. The following day I was feeling slightly right as rain and the day after that only got better.
For about a week I’ve been walking 17 minute miles on the treadmill since I wrote the above and the endorphin high has been awesome at keeping sad feelings at bay. I get up in the morning, throw on my workout clothes, eat breakfast, and head down to the in-house gym with a bottle of water and workout for about 40 minutes. The workout is two minutes to warm up, walk two miles at 17 minutes a mile and then cool down. With my Spotify “get fit” mix in my ears, the time passes quickly.
I haven’t done yoga since we’ve returned back to Louisville and while one could point out I was being lazy, I will retort there was no space in the condo for me to lay my yoga mat down. True facts.
The lack of space has much to do with my stuff taking up all the available space. Over the past weekend we moved all of the boxes down to TheExHusband’s storage unit and now the condo looks huge. After some furniture shifting, there is now space for my yoga mat and the condo doesn’t seem as claustrophobic as it once was. I joked to TheExHusband that as we’ve shifted all of my things into the storage, I will now get a job.
You can bet on it.

Speaking of such, my Louisville job interview went really well as they are bringing me in for a two day in-person interview in a few weeks. My Connecticut interview, via Skype, is tomorrow. I’m nervous but I feel pretty confident about both situations. I need to get a mutha-fucking job. Full stop. I’m doing research on both positions and living in both locations. If by some grace of the gods I get two offers, it’s going to be a really hard call. The bennies for both are nearly identical but the pay is wildly disparate: $20K between the two at their minimum pay rate. Taking into account the cost of living for both cities, the Connecticut job will allow me to pay down my $20K credit card debt that much sooner. (Which is crazy to think about when the cost of living is a bit on the high side.)
You might be thinking, “Okay. Get through the damned interviews first” and I get that. I do. But I have to think about these things so I’m not making half-assed jumps for one over the other. Both positions are awesome and I can do a lot of good at both institutions, so if I come to this crossroads, I’ve got a lot to think about.
It should go without saying if only one position offers me the job, that is the one I’m taking. A girl cannot be picky.
If neither offer me a position, I’m starting the search again in January when the academic job search reopens.
It should be no surprise I’m exhausted from the amount of job hunting I’ve done over the last 11 months. But it will get better soon, this I do know.

One of the last things I said to TheBassist before the break-up was I’m emotionally exhausted and that is still true. The idea of dating right now makes me nauseous and compounded with reading OkStupid, just ugh. (I would implore you to not read OkStupid for the simple fact it will depress you on the state of humanity.)
I’ve resigned for not dating for year but I will be open to finding new friends in the area I’m living in permanently. In Louisville it would be super awesome to go out with other people not TheExHusband and it would be super cool to meet new people on the East Coast. Friends are good. Dick pics are not.
I dragged TheExHusband out to a social event last week and that went…not so well. It was run by one of the larger social groups in Louisville and the crowd was mainly yuppies and other ilk; not my scene at all. TheExHusband and I met a few people, mainly creeper guys who were there to pick up women and “get free shit” (as told to us by one such individual). I was feeling anti-social, part of TheSads, and TheExHusband was amazed he was the one making introductions rather than myself. I’m a pretty outgoing person when I need to be but I just wasn’t feeling the vibe of this particular group of people. TheExHusband mused we need to find our own people, geeks and such, and there are socials for them so that will be on our agenda in the upcoming weeks.

I’m leaving the house on a daily basis, I’ve cut sugar out of my diet and eating as little dairy I can get away with, I’m exercising, and meditating (131 days in a row and counting), — you know, all the things that I need to live a life and that I should be doing anyway. But I loathe to talk about ThePlan, in this space, right now because I always have good intentions and then they peter out. I want to make these changes permanent — and I think this time they are sticking. I don’t feel rushed about doing these things, I just do them. I may not be talking about such matters in-depth as I am wont to do but I will at least give some kind of update every now and then
A big part of my feeling better will be when I get a damned job. That’s a certainty that cannot be denied. When that happens, everything else will fall into place.

Finally, it is a mere 209 days to Lisa-mas.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 1998

Crab Canapes and Christmas Pudding

Dear Internet,
Tomorrow I go back to work as my holiday break is now over, thus things may slow down around here after my mania output for the last few weeks. It’s now eight days into the new year and I thought it would be a good idea to give up an update as to how  my proposed changes are coming along.
(I’m still tap dancing around the notes that need to be finished for body and health pieces, but I’m just not there yet.)

  • Buy Nothing in 2013
    I promise I will not tell a lie: I have spent money on non-essentials this year, totaling $90.26, but it was for very good causes. Two of the items, a yearly subscription to Duotrope and the fall issue of Jane Austen Knits, were items I planned to buy in December but forgot until after January 1. I know I’ll probably end up purchasing a license for Licorize sometime later this week, but that’s a one time cost. Removing myself from temptation has been huge. I also am ignoring anything Margaret posts because I almost always end up buying what she suggests.  Anything I have found has gotten pinned or added to my wish list. Side bonus: Removing myself from vendor catalogs has slowed amount of junk mail in our mailbox.
  • 2013 will be the year of creativity (even if it kills me)
    I’ve only really worked on the cooking and knitting stuff, which have been slow going as one meal a day is a green smoothie of some sort, lunch is usually a salad, and dinner is something we come up together. Our timing is going to change once I go back to work tomorrow, so not too much to report.  In the knitting area, I’ve almost finished my brother’s hat and will be working on fingerless gloves for me next.
  • Year of the written word
    The goal was to write at EPbaB five times a week, at about 250 words per piece, and 10 hours a week writing fiction. In the last 8 days, I’ve published something here everyday except for one and in space of 7 published days, the pieces here totaled 4992 words. In fiction writing, the goal was to write a short story a month and get something published by my birthday. I’ve finished one story a few days ago and I’m starting on a second. I have two additional stories in draft form that also need to be finished.  So far, these goals are being met. But again, with work starting back up for me tomorrow, this output is more than likely slow down. The second bit of this challenge was to read everything I’ve had on hand – which I’ve not really done, but I am still shooting for finishing a book a week.
  • teh interwebs
    This was by far the best thing I’ve done as my inbox is so quiet right now, it’s kind of frightening. I did go so far as to unsubscribe from several of my favorite retailers emails, in addition to paring down other vendor emails to once a week or month. I’ve stuck with following vendors in one format instead of all of the ones they offer, which has also helped considerably. I almost did purchase a domain, one I was eyeing on in late November but didn’t follow through at the time, but refrained from doing so. I spent several days paring and cleaning up my RSS feeds, but that may end up just being a lost cause for the moment. I’ve not started putting together a workflow for the archives.

I’ve struggling as to how to articulate how I’m feeling today, and lately, finding it is much harder than I had hoped. The 900mg of Lithium has definitely leveled me out as far as moods go. I fake raged to TheHusband, while feebly pounding against his chest, if this was what being happy was like, then I’m not sure I could deal with it. Most of the side effects of lithium have dissipated, and I’m feeling pretty much, overall, okay. I’m still freezing all the time (and we’re on track for January to be our warmest month on record), but I have no evidence to say this is because of Lithium or not. But I’m far enough away from being without lithium to know the difference between when I’m on it and when I’m not. I’ve not gained weight and I am drinking a lot of water, so I do not feel dehydrated as one would think for taking a salt.
Concerta on the other hand is tricky – very tricky. I need to take it no later than 9AM, for if I do, I’m apt to be up all night. If I go a day without it, I can still sit and work without being all over the place. If I go two days without it, then it’s like I was before and like nothing has changed. I get small bouts of mania, but these seem further afield than before and seem to be random, meaning there is no trigger. My headaches are mostly gone.
In the before, I was very passionate about some things and mildly interested in others. In the during, I had zero interest in anything, and to some extent, to anyone. I could not feel or love what it was to feel or love. I did things because I knew how to already do them and I knew that they needed to be done.  Robotic. I could muster energy to feel something about tiny things, but larger things were passed over. I did not think of myself as being depressed until much later for I did not act like those I knew to be depressed acted. I did not see myself as being manic because I did not act like those I knew to be manic acted. Something was wrong, but to what extent that wrongness and/or what was needed to fix it si still remain to be seen. Well. We know, but whether this snake oil is actually working remains to be seen.
There you are. Here I am.
x0x0,
Lisa

Kalendae Januariae : 2013 will be the year of creativity (even if it kills me)

Dear Internet,
To continue kicking of 2013’s ass, next up is:

2013 will be the year of creativity, even if it kills me.

I have a lot of hobbies. Well, let me rephrase that, I start a lot of hobbies and never finish them. I also have lot of projects on the burner that I start and never complete. A pattern develops! A big push for the “Buy Nothing in 2013” was realising I spent a lot of time researching / buying supplies for a project, not a lot of time working on the actual project to get it to completion. Something I have said numerous time to people is an example of this is I learn how to play Chopsticks, I think I can then play Wagner.  My brain cannot fathom why it does not know how to play complicated when it learned the base, for it thinks that single base is all it needs. I don’t have the skillset on what it takes to learn how to practice. Which sounds grammatically wrong, but is so true. Throw in the ADHD (impulsivity, unable to focus), and you can see where this is becoming a mess. The idea here is to take one of my many hobbies/projects, pick a month, and start working on that said hobby. When the next month rolls around, continue with hobby/project A and then add in hobby B. Continue until all hobbies/projects are exhausted. Some are one-offs, others will be life-long learning.  Here is that list:

  • Start up the podcast, AUDIOMUSICBIOGRAPHICALLY.
    • I own 100G of music, which comprises of about 1000 CDs and hundreds of artists.  Due to my ADHD fueled depression, I actively stopped listening to music several years ago. The idea is to go through my list of artists, alphabetically from 0 to Z, listen to the band, write out how I got introduced to them and my connection to their music, and then podcast about it. Goal is a new podcast every week, 20-30 minutes each episode. Length of project is going to be over years. For holidays, TheHusband got me a mic and I did a test run reading the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice
  • Learn a language, namely Anglo-Saxon and/or French/Italian
    • Awhile ago, Alice and I decided to learn AS together, but life sort of got in the way. I think I may have to poke her on starting up with me again, but I will be going at it for sure since I have all the books / mp3s and online resources. Why AS? The better question is: Why not?
    • As for French/Italian, I have the Rosetta stone in French for levels 1-5, so that would be the easiest to start with Italian, another Romance language,  is more desirable since TheHusband and I plan on one day retiring to Italy. Or maybe Scotland. Maybe I should pick up Scottish Gaelic?
  • Learn to cook
    • If you’ve been following me for a bit, I’ve posted recipes on/off for various things, but the truth of the matter is, I’m a terrible cook. I’m a most excellent baker, but a terrible cook.  This morning, I nearly destroyed the pancakes I was making. So, I sourced the interents for suggestions on how to learn to cook and they were to get Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything The Basics and Jacques Pépin’s Complete Techniques, which were purchased before my self-imposed buying ban. Here’s hoping I don’t burn the house down.
  • Finish all my knitting/cross-stich projects.
    • Pretty self-explanatory. I bought a lot of supplies for these two hobbies, got really into them and petered out. I want to move beyond making hats/scarves and finish the gifts I promised with the stashes, that would be delightful.
  • Learn to sew.
    • TheHusband planned on buying me a machine for my 40th birthday this year, but since I was having foot surgery shortly after, throw in a long recovery, the machine in question is still on hold. Because I have zero supplies for this on hand right now, this will probably get pushed out towards the end of the year as the other projects take precedence.

While it’s awesome to keep my hands busy, what about my brain? With that, 2013 is also going to be all about the year of the written word.
x0x0,
lisa

The “To:Be” Project: An Intro

Manneken Pis, Brussels, May 2010

I’m currently ensconced in northern Michigan, in an area known as cherry countr y, prepping for an interview I have tomorrow. This prepping may or may not include spending 15 minutes cursing while I rolled my hair in soft curlers this evening, but alas, there will be no images to support that statement.1 A couple of years ago, in talking with my friend Rakesh, I asked how he got to be involved with so many different hobbies and seemingly master of them all. He said that he picks one new thing a year to learn. Simple, yet brilliant. I personally am far too “in like” with so many things that while it is okay with having these multitude of interests, I’m scatterbrained all over the place. I can talk smack about a lot of shit, but in essence, I’m mistress of none. And this got me thinking.
Orange chocolate balls. Heh.

In the last couple of years, I’ve started cultivating a few hobbies to see what I thought of them – cooking and knitting were but a few. The more I started working on these hobbies, the better I (obviouly) got. It started back in 2006, when attempting to impress TheEx, I made from scratch a Dark Chocolate Flourless Torte. What surprised me the most about this was that for someone whose idea of cooking was take-out and prior baking experience was box cake mix, the torte turned out to be a huge success. There is something about baking that makes me incredibly happy and most of all, a sense of accomplishment, “I MADE THIS!” kind of thing. Last holiday season I gave out baked goods that were also all made from scratch (not a boxed item in sight or KitchenAid mixer in sight!2) to various and sundry people.
Doctor Who iTardis iphone/ipod cozy, v1.1.

But I digress.
I then realise what I wanted to be, really, when I grow up, is a Renaissance woman. A punk rock Martha Stewart who can not only can her own goods,  speak several languages, keeps bees, put together and tear apart a car, herd pugs, play a musical instrument (well!) and at the end of the day, can out geek them all. So like Rakesh, I choose one new thing a year, master it and then learn the next new thing and this is how the “To: Be” project was born. These “things” can vary wildly from baking, knitting, learning a new language, writing a novel, or fulfilling a long held desires like taking race car driving lessons and ultimately, race cars.
Thus, a trend you may have noticed here as of late is that there has been loads of posts that have been popping up with titles like “To: Travel” or “To: Consume” or “To: Something.” These posts serve to not only chart my progress on these things that figure largely in my landscape but also to show off my accomplishments and also my failures. I mention this as in the last few weeks there has been a influx of new readers to The Lisa Chronicles, much stemming from search engines, mailing list discussions, and link backs to posts on the So, You Want to be a Librarian/Archivist?. While I have several posts in drafts format that need to be posted on that very topic, The Lisa Chronicles, is not just about the librarianship/archives world. There are many fine blogs and websites out there whose sole purpose is to cover just the librarianating/archiving world, I’m just not one of them.
I am stressing this point because I’ve received a number of emails from lovely readers who keep asking when I’m writing more on the So, You Want to be a Librarian/Archivist? topic, which I am and will be, but that is not the main focus of this site. All posts chronicling The To: Be Project will be sorted out from the main herd and available in the header at the top of the page for easier access. And now that I’m out of tea, I bid you a good night.

1. Seriously, my hair isn’t even THAT long (a titch past shoulders) but it is thick. I swear to Nigel that these hair curler maker people think the average woman has 10 hairs on her head. Tomorrow should have interesting results.
2. Justin and I currently live in 600 sqft apartment and our kitchen is galley style, 6′ long and 3′ wide. So, no KitchenAid mixer until we move and yes, I used every available desk/table space during the 2-3 day bought of baking.

To: Make: Knitting – iTardis, an iPod cozy (v1.0)

iPod, iTardis, iPhone
iPod, iTardis, iPhone

Roughly about 18 months ago, Lindsay sent me a link to an Etsy page of a seller showcasing their knitted Tardis iPod/iPhone cozy. Lindsay, in her infinite cuteness, said, ” Make me this!”
The design and concept of the Etsy version was pretty poor: The person essentially knitted (with acrylic yarn no less) a tube, unseamed, and then cross-stitched Xs in for the white/shadow on the doors. I was more appalled that the seller wanted $20 for the thing, even though essentially it was wrist cuff, just slightly longer. I knew I could do a lot better version that would also be much cheaper.
When Lindsay came to visit a few weeks later, I had constructed the pattern (more or less) and all we just needed to get needles and yarn. I also guessed, based upon my knitting speed, it shouldn\’t take more than a few hours to turn out. Since Lindsay was going to be in town for a few days, I figured we could leisurely get this going and have it done at a later time.
Little did I know that it would be fits/starts spanning 18 fucking months, not a few hours as intended. The design, implementation,needles, yarn weight and colors: Everything was frogged and ignored by me for months only to beredone and then frogged again!
With all that being said, here is the iTardis (FINALLY), HUGE thanks to Krazy Kate, this really only took me a few hours from start to finish as I had predicted all those months ago. Krazy Kate showed me the path of how to streamline and design the cozy, and yet there are improvements to the design and construction to already be made and thus, this is a prototype. Lindsay was so excited about this being finished before she left today, that she left with the prototype on her iPod. This version fits my iPhone (seen above) better than the classic iPod above (it’s slightly longer).
If someone can give me measurements to their iPad, I would adore that as I want to knit up a prototype for it.
Whomever helps me out with the iPad version, will get the prototype for free when I’m done (shipping will also be on me).
Leave contact information via comments or the usual locations.
Pattern for all versions, with tweaks, coming soon-ish. Image above, however, will take you to the Flickr set showing the entire thing in-progress.

40 Days (and nights) without Twitter.

By definition, I’m an extremist. I can’t eat one cupcake, I have to eat the whole batch. I can’t watch just one episode of $Television_Show, I must watch the entire series. I can’t do things in halves or partials, I must have the whole entire wondrous, beautiful thing. Thus, anytime I need to quit or par down on something, it’s hard for me to get into the mindset that majority of the population already does this on a daily basis and that it’s totally okay to have $X in small amounts or not at all.
Temptation and gluttony be thy middle name. And usually, I’m totally okay with that until it starts running my life — like Twitter.
Let me spin it this way: When TheEx and I broke up for a second time in August ’08, I swore that I was not going to read his blog anymore. This sounds silly, yes, but after nearly two years of being together and the joining of our digital and physical lives, I did not want to know what he was doing or how he was doing in grad school. I went from checking his blog several times a day, during the entirety of our relationship, to not checking his blog at all. NO MATTER HOW TEMPTING IT WAS TO GO THERE! I especially did not want to find out about his love life. I’m egotistical enough to state that once you go Lisa, you never go back and I know myself well enough to know that my little heart could not bear to find out that in “3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years” he’d be dating someone else. Also finding that information would lead me to want to track the newGF down and talk sense in her before he started smacking her around (literally).
But I’m horribly digressing.
The point being is that I had to rationalize my way through of not going to his blog: What was I going to learn? How was this information going to help me? Did I or do I need know what or how he is doing? How is this going to help me in the healing process? I deleted cached information so that there would be no auto-complete when I went to the browser bar, I cleared out the cache so that it would not show up in my history. I did not want any easy way for me to stumble upon his blog, even innocuously. Melodramatic? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.
Like reading TheEx’s blog, like smoking (25 days smoke-free! woot!), like most anything that has a shred of addictiveness to it – Twitter has become one of those indispensable things in my life that one wouldn’t think would make such an impression or be declared a necessity but because it has, I have to nip it in the bud before it takes over my life — which it has started to do.
I discovered Twitter in the August of 2007 via somewhere, created my account and tweeted my first tweet about procrastinating on a now-abandoned thesis. I lost interest in the technology — I knew no one really other than a handful of people on Twitter and since at the time the interaction with those people was sporadic, I too was sporadic with my tweeting. My tweeting picked up in December/January of ’08 and from June onwards, I became a tweeting fiend. I’m not sure what changed — perhaps finding out I could tweet from my cellphone via SMS was probably a huge factor, tweeting non-sequitor stuff I was thinking about while grocery shopping or what have you seemed like the bestest thing since sliced bread. Or that my own readership was growing as well as those who were following me.
Discovering that not only people but robots, news services, and whole corporate entities were on or getting on Twitter also helped further along the obsession. But what really hooked me was the immediacy of Twitter — there is no thought process or need for editing (other than “Can this fit in under 140 characters or less?”). Getting out a thought, no matter how minute or ridiculous or profound fanned the flames. According to TweetStats, I averaged 20 tweets per day for January 2009. My overall average is 10 tweets per day, which via another statistical tool (of which I can not find now, obvs.), was higher than the average tweeter who does something like 5-7 tweets per day.
Some popular tweeters get along on much less. But it isn’t about the time of writing the tweets that becomes a problem, really, it’s the auxiliary work that becomes the issue. I use auxiliary as a term for things such as reading my public tweet line (which can take time especially when reading pages upon pages after period of non-reading. Like reading what was going on in the Twitterverse while I was in bed.), finding new tweeters, researching said tweeters (yeah, like you don’t Google everyone you digitally meet), reading those tweeters back log and making decisions on whether to follow them or not.
In short, tweeting is not just about the immediacy of getting out your special snowflake thought but it is also about researching and developing relationships with those in your network, which of course takes a lot of time. So much so that everything else I am working on (such as working in a library, homework, studying, personal projects) went to the way side and I hadn’t realized to the extent of how bad this addiction of mine was getting until it dawned on me that the first thing I do when I’m at work everyday is log into Twitter — before I do anything else. My own writing for my various blogs, journals and personal use also took a huge nose dive – libschooled. alone hasn’t been properly updated in ages.
Couple this with I was beginning to write professional emails in Twit-speak, the problem had to be curtailed and soon. Several Twitterpeeps were discussing what they were giving up for Lent and while I no longer practice Catholicism, I do like a challenge. Could I go 40 days without participating in the Twitterverse? No tweets, no adding friends, no reading the public tweet lines? If I could give up smoking, which was on the one crutch that I have been trying for years to give up, surely Twitter could be no worse. So, I resolved for the next 40 days (starting today, Ash Wednesday, of course) of no personal tweeting and no reading of public time lines. Twhirl has not been removed from my computers but it has been removed from my desktop. I’m even debating on removing the Twitter SMS number from my phone.
In my little world, Twitter will not exist, at least for 40 days. But of course there are exceptions, such as libschooled. has third party software that tweets when it is updated, so that is okay. And I also believe some other software stuff I have installed on various forms also tweets when that is updated, so that is also the exception. As long as I am not personally involved in the tweeting, then I have not broken this vow of Twitter-chasity.
What I’m going to be interested in is how much the Twitterverse will have changed in 40 days — how many people have stopped following me, how many people will begin to follow me. What new, cool and useful toys will make its appearance while I’m gone and how social networking within my own Twitter group will also change and also social networking as a whole in the Twitterverse. You can get in touch with via the usual routes and I’m always on gTalk.
See you in 40 days. More or less. 😉