Ambivalent Thursday
Wound up leaving at 6ish last night, but Mom had beaten me home because she left earlyish to be home for a phone interview. Which she said went well, and if she made it to the next round there's a face-to-face interview to look forward to sometime in early August. So after I'd had my dinner we watched The Young Victoria, which had been included in the previews for Doctor Parnassus when we watched that Sunday night, and which I'd stuck on my Netflix queue at the very first position. We enjoyed it enough for what it was, and I finished binding off my Haruni Shawl.
Only I had a very tiny crochet hook to bind off with, and I worry that it came out tighter than it should have, and if I were smart I'd have been paying more attention to how short the chain loops were early on and revised the instructions to make the chains a bit longer back at the beginning when I only would have had to rip back a little bit and stick a few bound-off stitches back onto the needle, rather than undoing the whole damned shawl edge. Because I am lazy and occasionally optimistic, I decided to go ahead and cut the yarn and weave in the final end, and see how it blocks out -- the instructions tell me I have a choice between using blocking wires to make it into a regular triangle or separately pinning out every loop, and even though to this day I'm unsatisfied with how the Peacock Feathers Shawl edge looks because I did a lazy straight-edge rather than pinning out the loops, I think the bindoff is loose enough to block with a straight edge. (It might even work for pinning out the individual loops -- a prospect that worries me less since my second round of blocking on the Aeolian Shawl, especially since I bought another few boxes of T-pins for the purpose. Should buy another box or two of pins -- one of these weekends I'm going to wind up reblocking the Peacock Feathers Shawl properly...)
Okay, when in doubt go to Ravelry and see how some of the 1908 other projects made using this pattern turned out. It looks good with the loops stretched out -- the other option I've seen occasionally used was pinning out the mesh in between the pairs of leaves to drag that down into points. I've seen some blocking photos that show pins in the individual loops -- but I'm wondering how well it would work out if a blocking wire was run through the loops. Someone has to have gone that route, but I'm not seeing any shawls that look obviously excessively straight-edged (the way my Peacock Feathers Shawl does). Oh, hey, just saw a couple that were pinning out just the mesh between the leaf pairs and the leaf points, and that looks fairly nice. If nothing else, I suspect I can start my pinning with those points and then look at how many T-pins I have left. Or, hmm, just ran across one that looks like she started out with blocking wires through the loops at the "points" of the mesh to get the proper triangle shape and then went back and pinned out the loops in between those points. That might be a good idea.
Also, ran across at least two other projects that wound up with contrast edging due to running out of yarn like I did, and a few more with different-colored edging that was more likely deliberately planned. And I really want to make a shawl in teal at some point. Better stock up on Knitpicks Gloss in "Kenai," since I've got plenty to finish my Catriona Kneesocks but need at least a couple skeins more to do a shawl with. The Haruni I saw in "Kenai" looked nice, but I can probably find another pattern I'd love to do, considering how much lace is on my queue. (I'm ready to cast on for my black Irtfa'a Shawl now that the Haruni is done -- but if I find myself having to rip back the bindoff and redo it, I won't know till after I've blocked it Saturday, and if I'm already on to the next project it may be hard to make myself go back and fiddle with the old one. Maybe I should just suck it up and rip it back tonight without seeing what blocking does to it?)
And in a total shift of topic, last night we didn't finish the movie till 10:30, and I should have gone straight to bed except I lost half an hour drowsing across my bed fully dressed when I should have been washing my face and brushing my teeth. Could have lost more time except I noticed something that startled me right off the bed: A missing piece on my latest tattoo.
Four repeats of the main spirally motif going around my arm, and you see those four simple little circles tucked up against the top and bottom edges? One of those bitsy circles is missing from the very first motif, the one that wraps from my armpit to the front of my arm. It's because the stencil was getting seriously blurred as the artist worked, and at a few points he was having to basically freehand it, and that being at the very start of the process he just kind of forgot that little circle was supposed to be there on the design. (On that photo, you can see where the circle should be and isn't, at the top edge of that first spiral dealie.) And given that it's taken me a full month to notice it was missing -- and that being on the half of the tattoo I can see without resorting to a mirror, and tend to admire when I'm bare-armed -- I don't blame him a bit. I'm going in for another tattoo on that arm in October or thereabouts, I can have that missing circle added then. (And I made a special point of going to the bathroom to check the backside of my arm in the mirror. Three spirals with four circles, one with three -- that's the only one that's missing.)
So, yes, I was sitting here comfortably on target for finishing up the policy I was working on in time to log out of the system before going to lunch around noonish, because yesterday I didn't remember until I was actually up front taking over for the receptionist's lunch break that the home office in New York decided they couldn't see any good reason we should be allowed to log in from two stations at once simultaneously and I was stuck sitting there reading for an hour instead of getting a policy input into the system because I was midway through inputting a big policy back at my desk and couldn't get out of it without finishing it. No intention of doing that again today, so I was making a special point of being done with inputting this morning's auto policy by noon.
And then at about 11:30 my supervisor popped his head into my cubicle and asked if I was ready to go -- turns out today was the day some other office that we give some business to was taking us out to lunch, and I'd completely forgotten. Well, hey, free lunch -- I was willing to go. And we were going to the Olive Garden so close to the office half the people going were just walking there, rather than driving some miles down the road to the Mexican food place we usually have this annual lunch at. I was all set to head out and then I found out the receptionist wasn't going -- instead of kicking the phone over to the Night Service button and coming along (usual procedure for these occasionally group excursions), she was staying, and expected me to take over for her at the front desk as soon as we got back.
Whoops. And there I was going off still logged into the system back at my desk. I'd be sitting there for an hour with nothing I could do -- which is what I'd already done yesterday, and it's not like I didn't have enough stacked up on my desk. So I figured I could take a few minutes to wind up what I'd been doing and get out of it. Drive instead of walking over afterwards to make up for the lost time.
Only it took me a bit longer than I'd hoped to finish out the policy, and by that point I looked at the clock, tried to remember exactly when everyone else had left, thought about showing up after the group had been seated and maybe orders already taken... Decided it was pretty much too late to go, and I don't like the Olive Garden that much anyway. Wound up going to Subway instead.
Came back and the receptionist told me that I'd actually been missed -- someone had called back to the office asking where I was. Whoops. Oh well. Definitely too late by then. I ate and took over at the front desk, and when the group came back I had to explain -- repeatedly -- how I'd wound up not coming along after all.
I don't regret ducking back to my desk to wind up that one policy, though -- not given how much work I managed to accomplish while I was up front today. Enough to make up for how yesterday put me behind. Also, when I got back to my desk I found another big account sitting in my chair. (Why do my coworkers think a chair is a better place to leave work, or a note or printout they want to be sure we see when we get back, rather than on a desk with actual empty space available for stacking things on? It's a six-inch stack of manila folders with a neon green form on top -- it's not like I'm going to somehow miss seeing it!) Huge fucking auto policy that I'll need to start inputting first thing in the morning and definitely won't have finished by lunchtime, meaning there won't be anything I can do at the front desk tomorrow but read. So I'm doubly-glad I made a special point of not making it three days in a row I'm losing an hour of working time in the afternoon. (Hmm. I don't have have front desk duty next week -- I suppose I could do what I'd originally planned with tomorrow, and be printing out one of the accounts I was inputting yesterday and today instead. That's a job I can pause in the middle and transfer to the front desk with. Inputting the latest account can wait till Monday, when I can spend the full day on it...)
I'm already a week behind on LJ and really should not be playing with this build-a-dragon widget. Mostly I want a picture of the one I just created, though. (Crap, they have two different versions of horse-making widgets, too -- one for semi-realistic and one for My Little Pony-style.)
Oh, here's something I read last week but didn't take time to link to: How Sexism Hurts Men: "Undateable" -- "If you’re a feminist - and I’m going to assume that if you’re a regular reader of the Blowfish Blog, you’re probably a feminist - you’re familiar with how social programming guilt-trips and fear-mongers women into rigid and sexist gender roles. It’s not like it’s hard to find examples of it. It’s freaking everywhere. But I think we’re less familiar with how social programming guilt-trips and fear-mongers men into rigid and sexist gender roles. Our feminist sensibilities aren’t on as much of a hair trigger for male gender-role propaganda. And when this propaganda is subtle, I think we often overlook it. But we have a magnificently un-subtle version of it in a new book: Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won’t Be Dating or Having Sex. Based on the website of the same name, Undateable is an advice book, funny and snarky but with a sincere intent, about common failings straight men have in the dating department: things men wear and say and do that, without realizing it, make them entirely unacceptable to the opposite sex."
Among the many included links in the above post is On Being Age-Appropriate -- "Fashion is a language we use to express different concepts about ourselves, and of our relationships to other people. Fashion is part of how we say 'Person who accepts social norms' versus 'Person who defies social norms.' Fashion is part of how we say 'Sexually liberated' versus 'Sexually conventional.' Fashion is part of how we say 'I want attention' versus 'I want to blend in.' Fashion is part of how we say 'Masculine' versus 'Feminine.' (Whether we're male or female or neither/both.) Fashion is part of how we say 'trendy urban hipster,' 'suburban soccer mom,' 'ex-hippie,' 'Fortune 500 CEO,' 'heavy metal biker chick,' ' organic farmer,' 'gangster rapper,' 'college student.' Etc. Etc. Etc. Not to mention all the nuances and balances and combinations of all these extremes: 'I want to express my sexuality in a way that challenges gender norms,' 'I want to stand out in a way that commands respect,' etc. Fashion is even part of how we comment on the language of fashion itself: part of how we say 'I care about the language of fashion and want to stay current with it' versus 'I wear clothes so I won't be naked.'"
I could conceivably get out of here right at 5 today. And I've really gotten quite a bit accomplished with my workday.
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