Dancing Gangsters WIPed into shape

Okay, first thanks to everyone for the nice comments about the shrug. The people at JBW were also very nice about my loserness. You make a loser feel so much better about her loserly ways in this moment of loserissitude. Extra loser points for that last faux-word.

Okay, I want to be a dancing gangster. Oops, I mean a gangsta. Don't laugh, this is serious, I'm quitting my day job (which is barely enough to pay my rent, anyway), quitting this non-successful grad school thing, and start working nights in underground dance battles where I may, or may not, depending on how the mood strikes me, get into violent fights after said battles. Now I know you're wondering what has inspired this, and to this I'd like to pose the question, "why does anything have to inspire it?" Hmm? Why can't a person just wake up one day and realize that they've gotten their calling, and it is dancing hard gangsta style, no matter how internally contradictory such a thing seems? Well, why can't they?

Okay, you caught me out. I was inspired, and it was by the movie Stomp the Yard. Now you just never mind that IMDB rating of 2.7 stars, those people are crazy. This is an 11 star movie, and I'll tell you why. First, 4 stars straight out of the gate for having dancing gangsters. Oops, I mean gangstas. I mean, since West Side Story or MJ's Bad, when have you seen dancing gangstas? (and You Got Served doesn't count cuz I haven't seen it. Yet.) Yeah, Boy, I'm bad, watch these twinkle toes! Second, homedude who was the star had some beautiful retro slang gems, including "That dude is straight up whack" (I was a bit disappointed that the "whack" was not preceded by "wiggity"), and "I already schooled you once today, homeboy, how many lessons you wanna learn?" C'mon, you know that line was hard. Those added 2 more stars right there. But for real, that dude could dance like nobody's business, he was killing people on the dance floor, and the stepping was entertaining, too. So anyway, yeah, 17 stars.

Now, on to knitting. No FO's this time around. Actually, I have one, but I can't show it right now. So we just got the WIPs. And even one of those is a secret for a little while, too.

I think I'm about 1/2way done with Lorelei, which is from Yarn Play. I saw someone else's over on Knitty, you can see it here. Though I already had this book, it wasn't until I saw an FO from it that I was overcome with desire to knit from it. You knit the bottom as a strip then sew it up to form a tube, then pick up stitches along the edges and knit the straps. Also the pattern lets me put random holes in where I want them. I'm more than 2/3 of the way through the tube and not even through my 2nd ball of yarn, so I suspect that for the second size it will take no more than 4 50 gram balls. In "Cornflower" blue in Cascade Pima Tencel. I don't usually go for this kind of blue as I usually find it a boring color, but I kinda like this one.




Speaking of which, I went to WWKIP day celebration in Chicago's Millenium Park where I met lots of great knitters, and at least one really bold one. The first sentence out of her mouth was that she liked my Tomato sweater. Why, thank you. *smiles* The second sentence was that she hated us skinny bitches. What?! Can I introduce you to the nuanced meaning of "familiar"? Cuz that was way too familiar way too fast. Okay, okay, it's all good, I wasn't really that offended. But let me just say the complaining about sizes was way exaggerated. Yeah, I knit the smallest size, took 3 100 gram hanks and 1 week. But unless your bust size size is 132", or unless knitting math operates in some dimension where normal math rules don't apply, you do not have to CO 3 times as many stitches as I did, nor, assuming a similar speed of knitting, is it going to take you 2 months to make. A size 50" bust is just about 1 1/2 times my bust circumference, so you can use 5 hanks and finish in 11 days, sheesh, so don't give me all this "woe is me big girls have to spend 700 years knitting a top" stuff, okay?

Where was I? Oh yeah, WIPs. Another one I'm working on is the Jaywalker pattern which everyone and their mother has done.



I'm just turning the heel on the first sock. This is kinda low priority, though, so who knows when it will be done. It's in Yarn Pirate merino/tencel colorway "Loopy Blues". I didn't realize how popular this yarn was when I bought it. People are crazy for it and every time the Loopy Ewe (where I got it from) gets restocked in it, it sells out within a day. Sock knitters are fascinating creatures, I tell you what.

Okay, that's all for now. I have another natural hair meetup tonight. Tonight's topic is Conditioning!

One more thing, you all have to go over and check out Rose-Kim's series Thursdays Are For What The Hell Is This? Those big ass knits are too much. Which brings me to one final point. Why is it that nowadays everything that stinks smells like ass? "This smells like ass", and "that smells like ass." People, I'm beginning to think you don't know what ass smells like. Really, it's very distinctive.