I am making progress! And I haven’t pulled out all my hair! Here’s the Pasa Doble Shaw at 8 inches long – each time you see those cables cross… that’s 4 hours! So I’ve got about 14 hours into this thing so far. Ack! With another 28 inches to go that means… math… math… grumble… grumble… like 60 more hours! OMG… hopfully my numbers are off, ’cause like Barbie said, “Math is Hard!” I’m mostly working on this one on the weekends (locked in my bedroom) and a 1/2 hour every morning before I get up and get ready for work (while watching BBC News!).

I’ve made it to 12″ on the Kimono Vest – 12 more inches to go on the back and I’m thinking I should have bought another ball of purple… hopefully the yarn dosen’t disappear from Joanne’s sales floor. Luckily this project is simple enough that I can work on it while watching TV and driving too and from work (when I’m not ranting at my carpool coworking about the things that go on in our workplace – why can’t I win the lottery so I can stay home and make beautiful things all day!?!).  It makes one long for a Zombie Invasion so you could hole up for a month or two and knit while the Zomb’s starve to death (by 28 days later rules anyway).  Ah, Zombies….

This weekend my brother-in-law stumbled across a blog that touted a post called something like ‘100 Essential Geek Quotes – Gurrl Style’. I was immediately hooked! I’m a Geek and I’m a Girl! This has to be for me… and I was sorely disappointed. They were quotes all right, but only a handful of them were geeky and less than that were actually good quotes. Most of them were just things females happened to have said in a movie.

Let me reiterate – I was disappointed (and so was my brother-in-law).

So we set out to make our own list of quotes – granted we were equal opportunity with ours.

And how does this fit into a crafty blog? Well quotes make great cross stitch material! Stitch up a sampler or just a little sign! All the quotes listed here (and in subsequent Sampler Quotes posts) will be charted for cross stitch and made available via email – thepaperfox.net@hotmail.com , or you can leave a request in the comments below and I’ll send them your way.

This week’s movie was Galaxy Quest – if you have not seen this one you are totally missing out. Tony Shaloub as a stoner, Sigourney Weaver as a blond and totally having a spaz attack near the end, plus the guy who plays Zaphod Beeblebrox  playing crewman # 6, aka: the redshirt! It’s a Star Trek parody baby – and done beautifully.

Some of these we went back and forth on their ‘quotability’ – tell me what you think!

And the quotes are:

“My TV Guide interview was six paragraphs about my boobs and how they fit into my suit!” ~ Gwen Demarco / Sigourney Weaver

Dr. Lazarus: “You don’t hold the turbo down, it’s for quick boosts!”     Commander Tagert: “Oh like you know!”    (Alan Rickman and Tim Allen)

“Hey guys, there’s a red thingy heading toward the green thingy… I think we’re the green thingy.” ~ Guy Fleegman or Crewman # 6 / Sam Rockwell

“You broke the ship? You broke the bloody ship! ~ Dr. Lazarus / Alan Rickman

“Look, I have one job on this lousy ship, it’s stupid but I’m gonna do it! Okay!?” ~ Gwen Demarco / Sigourney Weaver

“Hey, don’t open that! It’s an alien planet! Is there air? You don’t know!” ~ Guy Fleegman / Sam Rockwell

“Didn’t you guys ever watch the show?” ~ Guy Fleegman to the other crewmembers/ Sam Rockwell

“Let’s get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!” ~ Gwen Demarco / Sigourney Weaver

“Chompers? Well screw that! What is this thing? I mean there’s no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No! I mean we shouldn’t have to do this. It makes no logical sense! Why is this here! Well forget it! I’m not doing it! This episode was badly written! Whoever wrote this episode should die!” ~ Gwen Demarco / Sigourney Weaver

This little lady is our new fashion model – she’s a 4-foot-tall sock monkey – how cool is that!?  Today she is wearing the Bernat Ruffled Baby Hat, Adult Version and one of my many, many, many knit scarves. I had to put my plush Zombie Zusifer in the picture or else he’d get jealous – and I tend to want to avoid vengeful Zombies (he came from Thinkgeek.com and is completely dismember-able – there’s also an awesome Youtube video where he and some pals stage an invasion).

But anyway – I haven’t given our Sock Monkey fashionista a name yet – if anybody has any ideas then drop me a line – there might be a scarf in it for you!

So, before Christmas I drug Mom into a yarn shop – and ‘lo, she didn’t fall asleep in one of their comfy chairs while I shopped; she actually found a pattern that she really liked. The pattern was from the Plymouth Yarn Company and is for a Vest Kimono.

I was so proud!

So I promptly bought the pattern and we shopped the rest of the day for nice yarn I could actually afford (because I’m po’). Luckily we found a sale at Joanne’s for buy 1 get 1 half off – we originally thought it said buy 1 get 1 free – which had me positively drooling, but we reread the sign and pouted about it.  Of course we still had to argue at the register because the sale price didn’t come up, I volunteered to go check it again – if I’m wrong, I’m wrong – but the manager just ok’d it and we went on our way. The yarn is Country by Caron – it’s a 25% Merino Wool/75% Acrylic Blend. I’m not wild about acrylic, but it does have the Merino in it. I’m hoping the acrylic base will make it more abuse tolerant (I’m mean to my clothes and assume everyone else is too). The main color is #0014, Deep Purple and the accent is a white #0007, called Naturally.

It’s a fairly simple pattern – or so it seems – the lady at Knit Wits said not to bind off the individual pieces, just put them on a holder, and when I’m ready she’ll show me how to do a 3 needle bind off. Yay! (And yes I feel guilty for not buying my yarn from her – but in my defense I did buy the pattern and a ball of yarn for another project there – I just can’t buy multiple skeins of yarn without a sale price!).

Anyway – I quickly got started and was making decent progress on the back using my funky plastic knitting needles from the 70’s (that I got at the Salvation Army for $0.60!) when I made a mistake…

I set my knitting down and left the room.

And my 90 pound Labrador used my project box as a stepping stool to get up on the couch (like he really needed the boost).

And shattered my funky knitting needle (of course it wasn’t the empty one, it was the one holding all the dang stitches).

Then, to top it all off – I didn’t have another pair of needles in that size.

I’ve been so irritated about it that I’ve been torturing myself with the Pasa Doble Shaw this whole time (see my previous post). It’s been sitting there,  just like this, for almost 3 weeks!

But I have finally left my aggravation behind me, bought new needles and am willing to try again during ‘tv time’ tonight.

 I learned an important lesson this weekend – all things are possible if you actually *read* the instructions. 

On attempt # 2 when I ran out of stitches before I ran out of pattern – that was because I didn’t *read* the directions – I glanced at them, assumed I knew what I was doing, and quickly screwed it up!

So with this latest – and actually successful try – I stopped when I got to the cables, studied attempt #1 (which I did keep – like I said I would), read, read, and re-read the directions and what do you know. It worked. Like a charm. Or really, it worked like the directions said it would!

So – lessons from this:

1. Judy B is a goofball.
2. Judy B has problem taking direction when she thinks she knows it all (this was demonstrated in school as well).
3. Judy B is a goofball.

Also – this pattern is not for the social knitter. You cannot carry on a conversation while doing this thing, the stitches change to frequently. In fact you can’t even watch TV if you think you might actually be interested in what’s on or you will lose your place. There is actually a couple of carefully hidden mistakes in this piece – made because I thought I had messed it up (while watching Earth 2100) and in trying to fix the mistake-that-wasn’t, I messed up. Lukily I fixed it, somehow. I think the Knitting Fairy was looking after me – she knows projects don’t make it past the 3rd attempt. (You can read about Attempt #1 here and here).

This project also breaks the cardinal rule of knitting – you must pull tight, tight, tight to keep those bobbles from looking absolutely ridiculous (I think 99% of knitters have to learn to loosen up – and then there’s this pattern!).

So here it is in all it’s glory – Paula D liked it so much she asked about borrowing the pattern… forgetting completely that I was borrowing it from her! Keep your fingers crossed that I can keep this thing together for another 30 inches…