March 08, 2006
UFOBOB
How to make yourself feel fat:
1. Get into your car and then use the seat-adjuster system to raise your seat up absolutely as far as it will go, until, in fact, the mechanism starts whining and grinding in protest.
2. Lift your butt up.
3. Pull up on the seat-adjustment button again.
4. Feel the seat easily and smoothly rise up another four inches.
How to make yourself feel good:
Read this number: 996.
Read it again: 996.
Say it out loud.
Clap your hands together and smile.
Do a little dance.
Grab a complete stranger and hug him until his face turns blue and he is gasping for breath.
That’s the number of items that F.I.R.E. has received so far!!! Way to go, y’all!!!
How to make yourself feel motivated:
Realize that we still need 3,522 items to be sent to F.I.R.E. before July 1 to reach our goal of 4,518. The good news is that I know that a lot of people are knitting feverishly out there, and that the number of items destined for Dulaan took a huge leap upward during the Olympics. That, and I, personally, have in my garage a large bin of items that have been given to me that I have yet to mail. (Yes, in my garage. It’s all part of the scam, folks, all part of the scam.)
Although I haven’t picked a particular day yet, I have this idea percolating in my brain that sometime during the next couple of months I should propose that a particular day be Dulaan Knitting Day and ask interested participants—which may well end up just being me—to start and finish one item for Dulaan on that day. Would you participate?
Speaking of Dulaan and hats and things that could be knit in one day, for me, one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of Dulaan is discovering that knitters have designed patterns specifically for the Project like the Dulaan Easy-On Kid Mittens and Ken's Dulaan Hat and the Double-Thick, Super Warm Dulaan Hat and, now, thanks to Kay of Mason/Dixon Knitting, The Corrugated Dulaan Hat pattern (pdf). Thank you, Kay! What a kick those hats are!
On the non-Dulaan knitting front, I would like to propose a new acronym for an Unfinished Object, the UFOBOB: UnFinished Object Because of Buttons. Personally, I think a UFOBOB—a knitted item that is 100% complete except for the sewing on of the buttons—is infinitely worse than your garden-variety UFO because There’s Just No Excuse. I mean, you’ve done all the grunt work: All the pieces have been knit, they’ve all been seamed together, all the yarn ends have been woven in, all you need is ten frickin’ minutes, the buttons, and a needle, and—voila!—your UFOBOB will be converted to an FO, a finished, wearable, useable garment. Case in point: Remember these sweaters destined for the grandtwins of a co-worker?
They have been languishing in UFOBOB status for, oh, 1.5 months now. I’ve even had the buttons all that time. Shame, Ryan, shame. But, phew!, this weekend I finally broke through the UFOBOB barrier…and, ta-dah!
Here, the silver star buttons on the purple sweater, in almost an electron-microscope close-up, thanks to TMK’s super-duper camera:
And, in another electron-microscope close-up, the pearl buttons on the green sweater:
Now, however, the sweaters are languishing in FONGTRBYWTTTTGWISAWA status—Finished Object Not Given To Recipient Because You Want To Take Them To Guild Which Is Still A Week Away. I did take them to work and wave them in front of the recipient but then snatched them away and said she could have them on March 16, the day after Guild. I have gone from being shameful to being heartless—definitely a lateral move.