Graft and re-Graft

Ordinarily, I wouldn't feel the need to point out the silly things that I decorate my blog with but LOOK! It's a skinny cute little knitting me (with pointy ears! )! If you want your own cute little knitting you, head on over to www.meez.com and join. In the space where it asks who referred you, type cornssss (note the fourth s) and you'll get five free coinz to deck yourself out (can't get the knitting or the wedding ring without coinz). In the interest of full disclosure, I also get coinz for any references that join up . . . but they're of no use in the real world. Also, Kelly? They've got Hairspray outfits! I'm ashamed to admit that I could easily send hours in there messing around and playing dollies.

On to the knitting content. I finished monkey 1, did something that I was calling kitchenering, and decided that it looked absolutely horrible. There are no pictures because it was very very bad, however, I do have witnesses to the badness.

Last night found me on the couch, muttering and grumbling as I returned to this point:

Once I got back to the start, I ran the video found here, watched it maybe three or four times, gritted my teeth and settled in to graft my little heart out. In the end, I did this:

I could only be more pleased if it'd looked like this on the first try.

And so, I'm proud to present Monkey 1.

The cool sock blocker is a bent-out-of-shape coat hanger. I found the tutorial here thanks to this post of Kristy's.

Tonight you'll find me on the couch doing this:

and watching Mike Rowe play with reptiles on Dirty Jobs.

Incidentally, Monkey 2 came to the immigration offices with me yesterday and evidently the size 2 bamboos she's on were not deemed nearly as dangerous as the zeros that Boudica was on. No chin poking test this time (the last time I was at the immigration offices, the screener checked to see how dangerous my needles were by stabbing himself in the chin repeatedly with them.) and while I was able to while away my time without getting bored, all of the knitting I did got frogged thanks to a ginormous error made as soon as I got there. I got my new stamp and so I'm good to go for another year. Next year at this time, I'll be able to apply for my long term (ten year) green card. Woot!

Goin' to the yarn store!

I've been extremely hard on my dpn's lately. There was an incident which I won't go into detail about but it may have involved a certain ... glove-like item leaping out of the open window of a school bus travelling at 55 mph. Turns out that even powder coated steel has a hard time dealing with speeding asphalt. Two actually came out unscathed, two had burrs and the fifth, well, I think of it every time I pass that stretch of road and sincerely hope that its final resting place wasn't in some poor saps tire. The other incident involved my size two bamboo dpn's and my knitting/book bag. All I'm going to say here is that you should be gentle when putting your sock in progress into a book bag that has a large and heavy binder in it.

When the metal dpn's bit the dust, Mathboy suggested that I make do and refused to even consider a trip to my nearest yarn store (which, as it's nearly an hour away, is not a good week day destination so we go as a couple while doing other things in Tampa on the weekends). However, on Monday when I sheepishly admitted to my latest accident and told him that I was going to need to replace two sets of dpn's, he said "oh, ok. When we're done at the immigration office on Friday, we'll go to Knit and Knibble and get you some new ones".
I was flabbergasted. Even argued with him saying crazy things like "I can live without full sets for a while" and "I can make do". I have since recovered from my temporary insanity and am now plotting routes through the store to get to the needles while caressing the maximum amount of yarn. There *would* be yarn buying also, but as the school year ended yesterday and there are no jobs in my immediate future, I'm pretty much reduced to knitting from my stash. The good news here? Well, my stash is very very small and once I start knitting hair and fur out of desperation, I'm sure that the budget will be rearranged to allow for a skein or two of sock wool.

Incidentally, the immigration office visit should be (please God) uneventful. Essentially the temporary stamp in my passport that declares me to be a Lawful Permanent Resident Alien will expire in July and I have not yet received my Green card. I've been pushing the USCIS to find out why they haven't issued that rather important document and recently found out that they were investigating and that I could expect an answer in October. Three months too late. When I asked what I should do about my rapidly expiring stamp, they told me to make an appointment to have it extended. As this type of joy is par for the course with Immigration, I made the appointment and now Mathboy and I will be spending the kickoff to our Memorial Day weekend running around in Tampa having a grand old time.