FoF: Getting Back To It, part 2

So I decided to pick up a small project after finishing that earlier frogging.  It's a hat.  One that, according to my project notes, I actually finished once -- but it was too small so I frogged it back to where the decreases began with the intention of knitting more rows straight. ... The notes, however, didn't specify how much more I thought I'd need to do. And looking at where I had placed a lifeline, I'm guessing that I've knit about an extra inch (maybe a little less) in pattern before the decrases.  Not sure how much longer I need to go at that.  I wish I'd done enough hats to have gotten a sense for how much I'd need to do to get the right size for me, but alas no...

Anyway, this is my "Dreaming of Berets" (pattern: Reverie by Amy Swenson):

It'll look better once it's finished and blocked, of course.

And as the baby has just woken from her nap, I'll have to put this project down and resume another time.

FoF: Getting Back To It

So, um... nothing has happened since that last entry so far as Finish-or-Frog is concerned.  Nothing until today, that is.

I saw my husband frogging his socks -- he wants to restart them and do them differently.  He hasn't knit in years.  ... so I decided I should do at least one thing on my Finish-or-Frog list while my daughter is napping.

So I grabbed the Forever Shawl and ripped!  Felt good to finally find an end to that eternity of wasted yarn.

Here's the photo I took in Feb 2012 before letting it hibernate:

... and it looked pretty much exactly the same when I pulled it out today.

But now, it's just a nice, compact ball of yarn.  Yay!  Only took a couple minutes to do as well as I hadn't gotten very far into the shawl before deciding I despised working the pattern.

Now I have a gorgeous skein of 100% Merino laceweight yarn that's slightly more purple/pink than the red in that photo above.  My cameras have never been good at capturing the color of things for me.

And I can't decide whether to hunt down a pattern in my queue that would be good with this yarn, or move on to another FoF project...

FoF: Starting Early

Sometimes it's best to get started on things when the inspiration hits rather than when you pre-schedule it.  I was feeling like I needed to accomplish something, so I went into my WIP closet and looked for something small that I could rip out or finish quickly.

Lo and behold, I stumbled on the learning piece I started for an entrelac class at Stitches West in 2012.  The pattern was supposed to result in a scarf, but I was never going to finish it because it required cutting the yarn (and therefore weaving in ends) far more frequently than I'm ever comfortable with.  Unfortunately, this also meant that the portion of the yarn already used was going to be useless if frogged.

So I slipped the live stitches back to the other needle, and retroactively bound off the stitches I could, leaving only 2 live stitches mid-row.  I then wove in the ends (all gazillion of them) and with an extended piece of scrap yarn, I wove in the 2 remaining live stitches.

And voila... a "finished object" that's about 8" x 5".  I have no idea what to do with it, other than give it to my toddler to see if she's interested in playing with it.

So that's one down ... 19 to go.

Now to put the remaining yarn back with its mates in the bins in the closet...

Goal for 2015: Finish or Frog

So I've got a bunch of unfinished knitting/crochet (mostly knitting) projects (aka "Works in Progress" or WIPs).  Many of these have been sitting untouched ("hibernating") for more than a year... some for far longer than that.  I can blame pregnancy complications and early motherhood for the past year (I wasn't able to work on anything between about August/September 2013 and September/October 2014), but not for much of the time before that.

Anyway, the time has come.  I am sick of having so many unfinished projects around - so I have decided that by the end of 2015 I need to go through all of those hibernating projects (currently 19 -- though possibly adding the 2 that are currently active WIPs) and make a serious decision: finish it? or rip it out (i.e. "frog" it) to reclaim the yarn?

If I choose to frog the project, I have to commit to doing that and actually get it done, or it'll keep sitting in my closet taking up space, using up a set of needles or a hook, possibly holding on tight to stitch markers or other notions.  

With 19 projects to sift through, I'm going to set a minimum pace of reviewing 3 per month, so that I will have gotten through (almost) all of them by the end of June to decide how I'm going to proceed with each.

Knowing me, I'll be somewhat paralyzed by the "what if" ... specifically "what if I regret frogging that?" though I can't think of any scenario off-hand where I might wish I still had a specific project on the needles when I hadn't worked on it in so long.  The other factors that may slow me down with my decisionmaking are sentimentality and my dislike of wasted time/work.

For example, some projects are ones that I think of fondly as "firsts" and I really would like to finish them, especially with the amount of time I put into them, but there are other circumstances that get in the way -- such as the shawl/wrap that I'm about halfway through but that is so heavily and intricately cabled that I can't figure out what row I left off on, and being the perfectionist I am, I don't dare try to restart work for fear of starting in the wrong place in the pattern.  I'm sentimental about this project, being also that it's the one that got me started with serious cabling (which I've since gotten over entirely), and it was the one that got me out to a specific local yarn store for the first time.

Hopefully, throughout the year, I'll be posting these various projects here with discussion about my thought process in deciding whether to finish or frog, and then progress photos.

As many of the projects are small, I should have no trouble finishing them if I choose.  However, some of the projects are significantly larger in size (e.g. blankets, sweaters, etc) and I'm going to allow myself leeway on finishing those.  Rather than requiring myself to finish them (if that's the option I choose), I'm going to require myself to make steady progress.

In the meantime, my goal for December is to finish the two crocheted blankets I started on over a year ago (one July 2013, one November 2012) and have already picked back up this year.  I'm close to finishing one of them, and the other might end up as a 20th WIP for the 2015 project... but at least I already know I WANT to finish it!

This is going to be a tough goal for me, but it should be doable.  Wish me luck, and keep me accountable! 

DTftMS #1&2

I'm starting a new series for my own amusement. I need somewhere to post them, so why not here?
These are pithy, tongue-in-cheek, philosophical observations that (if you let yourself dwell on them) are actually kinda fun (at least for me) to turn over and inspect while showering really late at night.  The wording isn't always the best, but it's the concept behind them that matters.  So I bring you:

Deep Thoughts from the Midnight Shower (DTftMS)

1. If nothing changes, then everything will stay the same.

2. There are two types of people in the world: (i) those who don't understand rules of logic, and (ii) those who enjoy setting up false dichotomies to mess with the first group.

And that's our first installment. It took a few weeks to germinate, so don't expect anything regular. Until next time.

Uhoh... Computer Woes...

So my Mac is apparently dying a very slow and painful death.

First symptom: iTunes and iPhoto started having trouble loading (and would freeze rather than load the databases... which happened to be stored on the external drive).

Second symptom: the external drive fell into an existential depression. That's right, it decided it didn't exist anymore. While the fan keeps running, it shows no other sign of life.

Third symptom: tonight, the Mac took about 20 minutes to start up, during which it asked me no fewer than twice to log in (initial log in, not the kind of log in prompt you get after being idle for a while).

Fourth and most recent symptom: the dock, on load, had reverted to the default dock, with no apparent means of restoring my old preferences.

I think it's time to lay this machine to rest and get a new one. The question then becomes:

Do I buy a replacement that's simply the current model of what I had (Mac Mini)?
Do I invest a little more in a regular desktop model?
Do I splurge for a notebook model?
...
or do I go bargain basement and get a cheap PC?

I'm thinking the Mac Mini is probably the right option... but I really should consider whether I can afford better (cuz if I can, it does sometimes pay to spend a little more to get a machine that'll do more and be reliable for longer... or be portable...)

I hate decisions.

DMV Bureaucracy Sucks.

Ok, so when I got married, I changed my name on my license. I took on my maiden name as a second middle name. The DMV was fine with that.

I tried to change my name on my vehicle registration, but because I'm not the title holder (that'd be my bank), they wouldn't allow me to change it. I had to go through the bank. So when I went through the bank, gave them the forms already filled out (along with the address change cuz I'd moved to northern california by then), the DMV sent me a new registration with my new name.

But they didn't put my maiden name as a second middle name. Instead, they squished it together with my last name.

I went in to the DMV to request this be corrected. They said the issue was merely a spacing one, and that they were unwilling to fix it because of that. I growled, went back to the bank, tried to get it fixed through them, and the response back was that the vehicle registration system apparently wasn't set up to handle multiple middle names.

So I let it go. Until DH and I moved and bought a new-to-us car and registered it in person. As the title holders, we could do that. The lady behind the counter was so nice and when I told her about the annoyance of the last attempt to get my name right, she explained about the Only 3 Name thing again, and I understood but was still frustrated -- but she was happy to squish the two middle names together. I much preferred that.

Because of the move, I changed my address with the DMV again (as required). I thought I also changed it on the registration via the bank.

The other day, I received my registration renewal notice 3 days after we received the one for our owned car. They're both due the same day (what a stroke of luck! feh), so likely were both sent on the same day.

The problem? Mine had been sent to our old address. It had my second middle name and my last name squished together, and I'm sure the post office didn't have fun trying to figure out whether I really was the person they were supposed to be forwarding mail for.

So now I get to try to deal with the bank and the DMV to update my name and my address on my vehicle registration, all cuz the car's not paid off yet (and won't be for a few more years yet). As proven with our owned car, if I could do this all at the DMV myself, it would work beautifully. But because I'm required to go through a third party, and they merely fax the forms in to the DMV (maybe the DMV would let me walk in with notarized forms? I'd be ok with that...), so any errors aren't discovered until way too late...

And to top it off, I'm feeling like I've been run over by a ton of bricks today. I no wanna deal.

Fun times.