Things have changed

I have a million excuses for my silence. I've been knitting, I just haven't been talking about it. Mr. Rich, Dale, Fred, and I have since moved out of the Valley. We just couldn't take the cold and the mold and the housemates and the crazy landlords much longer. This happened in March during the middle of the semester. It just has been recently that it feels good to loaf about without feeling like there's something else that needs to be done to get settled in and to get the house in order. Summer's creeping in already and I feel like I have every day until the semester begins accounted for. My first goal is to get my languishing thesis published. So...if you happen to be the associate editor for the Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, please be kind when you get my revisions. My second goal is to get my dissertation plans in order and get some semblance of a proposal together. If you can think of why it's a good idea to study endophytes on temperate region trees, please let me know. And finally, I just want to knit my little brains out. I just posted a completion on my Ravelry page for Vogue's The White Way Lace Shrug...This is what I said:

"What a pain in the ass pattern this was. By the 12th time I frogged it became a challenge. By 20th time it became personal. By the 30th time I was ready to start randomly strangling people on the street. First Vogue printed it wrong. Then they posted corrections which were also partially wrong. And took them weeeeeeeks to rectify the pattern. Then they didn’t bother to elucidate instructions at all…For instance…continue rows 70 to 74 20 times. Instructions like that make you think that you have to knit rows 70 to 74, that’s 4 rows, 20 times. Meaning when all is said and done you should have knitted 80 rows…Apparently this is not the case, you’re supposed to knit rows 70 to 74 and repeat until you have achieved 20 rows total. I should have gotten a clue when the sleeve just kept going and going. Vogue, what a bunch of effing slackers. You’d expect a magazine touting that name would have their s%$t in better shape, and that they would express their sincerest apologies by at least replying to your email suggestion. Thanks to the designer Tony Limuaco for posting corrections on her website, and no thanks to whoever it was that made her take it down.

Basically, if you want to get this pattern right, you’re going to need the magazine, all the corrections, and the designer’s corrections to cobble together what would have been such a joy to knit. The finished product is beautiful, but I don’t think it was worth all the curses, heartache, and anxiety attacks.

Oh, and yeah, good thing I didn’t pay the upwards of $250 to use the Tilli Tomas Rockstar yarn. Having to repeatedly rip something I knit made out of that would have really ended in violence.

I'm wearing this thing to my brother's wedding in a few weeks, so I'll have Mr. Rich's take some really hot pictures of me and I'll post soonafter.