I really like Bladerunner.

It's funny; it's supposed to be set in like, 2019 which is not too distant in the future, but there are flying cars and the architecture is totally different yet still looks old somehow, etc. Funny. Funnier still that Pris is seen wearing leg warmers which have been in and out of style twice since the movie came out.

Today I work the store until 4 and then I have a brief T.A. meeting for marking. I did a lot of good work on that chapter yesterday. I think that if I give it a good polishing tonight/tomorrow morning, I can fire it off to a couple of colleagues to proofread right away. I had hoped to get it to my supervisor by the end of the month and now that's starting to look possible.

I finally made guage for the sandworm mittens last night; I needed to go down TWO needle sizes!! I have to say, I really do hate swatching. Part of my love for knitting involves patience, and I really do have a lot of patience. But I don't like wasting my time, and spending as little as half an hour working up a teeny rectangle to measure and then promptly rip out and do again with another needle size is wasting my time.

I guess the fact that I found guage at 2 sizes smaller is a testament to the importance of swatching. For those of who you don't knit or just don't know what I'm talking about, you have to use trial and error to make sure your stitches are coming out the same size as the pattern designer's stitches. If they don't, the dimensions of your final product will be skewed (a way bigger waste of time).

I'd like to have these mittens done by the end of January too. Last night when I was freezing coming home I thought of Jen's fingers!

sandworm mittens

So when my friend Jen lost her cute shark-mittens, she commissioned me (or undeadclothingco) to make her a pair of sandworm mittens! I was almost kicking myself that I hadn't thought of it first! Yesterday we went to a movie and she supplied me with a diagram of the color scheme, which is kickass amazing awesome.

There have been only a handful of occasions in which I've custom made something for someone to their tastes. I made a wallet for my friend Andre. He gave me "ideas" and "themes", but left a lot up to me. While I find it really cool that he had that much faith in me, my "seller's anxiety" was through the roof! I worried that a) he wouldn't like it, b) he wouldn't want to say so because we're friends, and c)that I'm overcharging him, even though it was pretty tricky to paint.

I don't have this anxiety with Jen because her specs are pretty straightforward (I wish I could scan in the diagram she drew, it's hilarious) and at this point in the winter, I'm sure she wants warm hands!

If they turn out (and why wouldn't they) I think they'd make a good undeadclothingco original product. There was a it of a boom in animal mittens over the past 2 or 3 years (coinciding slightly with a knitting boom... interesting) but I've only ever seen the pretty straightforward animals. Bears, alligators, snakes, etc. Jen's sharks were pretty original, but not like sandworms! Hmmm, I could sell 'em in a set with matching socks...