Frogging

Frogging is the most unpleasant part of knitting by far. It's slow, it's tedious, and picking out your stitches one stitch at a time, the way I usually do it, just emphasizes that you're spending time undoing your work (and you'll need to redo this work again).

I have tried just ripping out the stitches many stitches at a time, and then picking up the free stitches below, and it feels faster, but it's a lot more scary. Also, I suspect that any time I gain in ripping out the stitches, I lose immediately when I miss picking up one of the free stitches, and have to fumble around that area.

It is possible to correct stitches without undoing whole rows, but (especially when it's a missed yarnover), sometimes there's just not enough slack in the area to fix it, without everything else looking weird.

Right now, frogging is doubly/triply painful, because I'm doing a baby blanket (don't ask which baby! I guess I'll store it until someone I know needs one), and a three hundred fifty stitch row is not fun to undo.

But! I'm excited because I just stumbled across a much faster way of frogging, by using a smaller needle to pick up stitches in the first good row, and then ripping back to it quickly. (Instead of ripping first and then picking up later).

One small tweak I've done is to pick up the stitches two at a time: through the right leg of one stitch and the left leg of the next stitch simultaneously. It means I'll need to pay attention to which leg I'll be knitting when it comes time to redo the row (always the right most leg, but the leg on the right might be either at the front or at the back), but the increase in speed is worth it.

I have seen people mention it before, but it just now hit me what they meant. It's like making a lifeline, but doing it after you've made the mistake. Most tutorials that talk about lifelines, which secures your knitting at a certain row so you can rip back to it quickly, also emphasize that you need to prepare your lifeline beforehand. (Kinda like committing at a known good point in your code, before going on to do riskier things!)

If you're anything like me, you will probably have been too lazy to make a lifeline, and then regretted that decision several rows later, when you're picking out stitches one at a time. v.v

I don't know if this technique works with more intricate lace knitting; I suspect that a lifeline might be safer, but for what is mostly simple stockinette, this works fine. And ripping out stitches is now fun :-D

Out of the country

Heading out to Cambodia/Vietnam for five days *g* I meant to research language, but somehow ended up researching food instead.

I'm in the middle of packing up clothes, and wrapping up time critical items. I will regret the lack of language knowledge soon enough *rueful*.

(From my research, it sounds like it will be similar to the Philippines in some respects, and very different in others which I mean. I DUNNO. I feel like I may be able to luck out with Chinese in some areas, though)

I will be busy during the day, but will be coming online at night. (I suspect I'll be tired from all the walking, so not going to be around much, but)



I will have more luck with the language (and similar luck with food *_*) in Hong Kong, where I'm visiting briefly at the end of this month. Mom needs to do some errands for my grandpa, and needs someone to accompany her, so I volunteered / was volunteered.

Quite happily! There's a fantastic restaurant over there called Jade Garden, plus the other fantastic restaurant which I forgot the name of but which has yummy goose, and we're definitely dropping by both of those.

Bonus: the hotel is within walking distance of the yarn store I made my mom tell me about. It's the same yarn store where my mom bought the cashmere yarn that I used for my grandpa's scarf. Not that I intend on splurging on cashmere on my own, but they carry other, more interesting stuff, too, like a bamboo mix which is bright and glossy and really lovely.

I have never been there, but I have dispatched my mom and brother (who was the designated helper last time my mom ended up in Hong Kong) to that store. That time, I didn't have much money, and I could only get them to understand as far as "nothing acrylic!"

This time, I will be there personally. And I will have money to spare :-)


-- lots more stuff about Hong Kong than about Cambodia or Vietnam because I have been to HK, but never been to either Cambodia or Vietnam. I'm excited to go to all these places!

Packing

Clothes:

Packing for a hot weather country is a lot less stressful than packing for a cold weather country. Probably because the Philippines has hot weather, so I just pick clothes that I would normally wear :D

Whenever I go to a temperate or a cold country, I have to prepare my packing at least a week in advance, because I may not have enough tops / sweaters / jackets / shoes / socks / scarves / gloves / whatever. And then there's the stress of figuring out where all my old sweaters / thick tops / scarves / thermal etc have ended up (somehow about a third of them always manage to get lost, no matter how carefully I packed them last time). This time, it took me barely thirty minutes to pull stuff out of my closet, roll them up, and toss them into my suitcase.


(Ridiculous confession: half a week before packing for any overseas trip, I wear all my crappiest clothes, so that I will be sure to have all my better clothes clean and dry and ready to go *g*)


Books:

Oh man, I am loving tech right now <3

Used to be that I'd have to spend a lot of time going over my library, to decide which books to bring (definitely not the second book, but should I bring trilogies, or standalones? If I bring trilogies there's the risk that I'll hate it from the first book so I'll be bringing along three books that I don't want to read, but if I bring standalones maybe I'll finish them too quickly. Maybe I should bring one trilogy and two standalones. And maybe I should start on the first book of the trilogy right now, so I can tell whether the series agrees with me...) I mean it's a pleasant way to spend time, but sometimes I don't have time to spend! At least, not until I'm on vacation *g*

Now, I have approximately a gajillion books loaded up on my iPad and phone, and I don't need to worry about additional weight when I add an additional book. I am still bringing along two paperbacks (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and some standalone by Garth Nix), in case I run out of battery, or I'm in a situation where I won't want to bring out a gadget.


Knitting:

About a week ago, I spent some time putting together several knit kits, and tossed them onto an empty shelf by my bed. I noted down the names of the patterns on the outside of the bag, and saved the patterns on ReadItLater (yay Ravelry).

Then a couple days ago, I picked out one (Grounded by damned_colonial), and started it on a pair of bamboo needles. I got as far as one repeat of the pattern (for later reference), before making myself stop so I would have something left to do *g*

I like it: the pattern is easy to memorize, so I don't need to consult a chart or instructions. And since it's a scarf, the gauge isn't important. I thought about making a hat or sock, but I was worried about what I'd do if it turned out my needles were the wrong size, and I had no other needles on hand.


Work:
I meant to zoom through the review queue, but I got held up trying to finish the Atom API Publishing Protocol patch, and setting it up on my 'hack for public testing. Unfortunately, it's not working on my 'hack, though it's working on my local dev env, so I feel like I should have gone with the queue instead. Frustrating!

(Y'all will still be here when I get back, though, right?)