One Crazy Fiber Lady

A big hearty thanks goes out to everyone for the faith they showed in me during my job hunting.  I really appreciate the support from all of you and the outpouring of celebratory comments really made a happy time even happier.  I really don’t know what I would do without y’all.  And for the curious, the offer came from the callback interview last Thursday.  It was a whirlwind romance there.

Tues:  First round meet and greet.
Wed:  They decide that want a second round ASAP and not wait until the rest of their first rounds were over on Friday.
Thurs: Second round 2.5 hours of tech questions and personality check to see if I would fit with the team
Fri:  OFFER AND ACCEPTANCE!

I won’t name names, but the company provides an "online learning environment" designed expressly for K-12.  I’ll be working on Systems Integration between the company systems and those of the school systems.  The work sounds challenging and rewarding in the end.

I gave notice yesterday.  Not to the evil-director, but to my manager.  Haven’t talked to the director yet and honestly, I doubt he’ll even speak to me.  He’s probably just as happy to see me go.  The manager, on the other hand, did not look very happy at all.  Kept running his hands through his hair as we spoke.  Poor guy.  Trying to re-platform and redesign with a continually shrinking staff.  They finally hired a new Java Developer, probably to replace the guy who left in early June, who started yesterday.  Meanwhile, they need to replace my buddy who left on Tuesday.  Now they’ll have to find my replacement.  Hehehe.  Because of the whole .NET v. Java, there is no one already here that they can pass these duties onto.  NMP.  Anyway, I’m happy as a lark.  The countdown has begun and I have until next Friday to stick it out.  I didn’t take any time between the two positions, but I feel a sick day coming on this week  

Now that the drama of job hunting is over, I can back to some serious knitting.

Another pair of socks went down.  I started the second sock between the first round and callback interview on Thursday.  With the help of over an hour sitting and waiting before the last interview of the day together with a train that broke down on the way home that night (it was a really LONG day) wherein I didn’t get home until 9 (that’s why I didn’t show to the SnB ladies), I finished the sucker Friday.  Details are over in the album, here.

Do I need to mention that I cast on for new socks almost immediately?  Yeah, didn’t think so.  Sunday night I pulled a skein of Jitterbug in the Mist and did the first couple of rounds for the toe, tucked the works in my purse and headed off to bed.  By the time I hit Hoboken yesterday, this is the state of that sock:

I’m using US1 as the yarn is a tad thicker than my norm, very similar in texture, I find, to STR.  I was up a little early this morning so after dressing, curled up on the comfy chair in my room and worked on the sock while watching the news.  Here’s the sock as I waited for the train in my patent-pending dashboard shot

When I tucked the thing into my bag as I got off the PATH this morning, I was about an inch shy of the ribbing for the cuff.  This baby is going down today.    I’m not super thrilled with the yarn.  If I used it again, I would give a US2 a try.  The fabric is a tad stiff with the 1′s.  Still, you have to love a small foot and a 52st sock for speed knitting!

Socks, contrary to popular opinion, are not the only things I’ve been working on.  There’s Tina that I try to work on at least every other day.  I’ve completed 6 of 9.5 repeats of the center pattern.

The Mystery Stole KAL did not have a clue this past Friday, which is a good thing.  Thanks to all the studying and excitement of last week, I didn’t work on it until Fri/Sat.  I blew through most of the two charts on Sunday.  I’m a few rows of finishing the second chart and should have it done either tonight or tomorrow.  (I’m making Tuesdays and Sundays spinning nights).

I really like the stole so far, but am just a little bit tired of the current strawberry section.  I was tempted to just cut it a few repeats short but decided to keep going.  Each week when the clue comes out, I take advantage of Adobe Photoshop and combine the two half charts into one and with the help of a highlighter, keep my place for each row.  The system has worked so well that when I was prepping the Tina Shawl pattern for usage (I always photocopy and work from that), I combined the two half charts into a single chart and printed on one sheet.  Fortunately the eyes don’t mind the smaller block size.  I would have liked grid lines for the 10 marks like I’ve seen on other patterns, but adding with a fine point pen the stitch count for plain knits has made it much easier.

I think that’s about it for now.  I’m in a wind down phase now at work.  I finished and deployed my last big project this morning and actually documents the administration of this monstrosity called the intranet around here.  I’ll have to find something to amuse myself

Craft on!

…cause she got and accepted a job offer today!!!!The studying definitely paid off! Starting Aug 13 I will be reporting to a new office in a completely different neighborhood (think watery shot from yesterday). I can’t wait! Monday I give notice Hopefully a real post soon as the jub hunting schtick is over! Gut feeling is that this is the totally right place.Craft on!

Busy busy day. Don’t want to jinx things or dare get my hopes up but callback interview went quite well. Now I’m waiting for the third of the day which doesn’t start until 5:15. Looooong day. I will say that it appears that taking a day off to study is paying off. Hopefully I will know sooner rather than later how well it has paid off…..Craft on!

I had some time off between interviews. I have three scheduled for today including a second round at a company I first went to on Tuesday. I just had some lunch and am now off to find a nice quiet spot for a cup of coffee and a little knitting before my 1:30. I just thought you’d like to see today’s lunch spot.Craft on!

Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes.  We spent a nice quiet day at home yesterday.  Unlike previous birthdays, including one where I came home from work running almost 104F fever (thanks to the monkeys giving me coxsackie virus), this was a more comfy day home.  Unfortunately, we were limited in what we could do because Kat has had a bad reaction to a sunblock.  She has lesions on her face and arms.  The pediatrician, who conveniently lives across the street, recommended keeping her out of the sun until they healed.  That meant no boat this weekend and limited outdoor playtime.  We spent some time out in the early morning and late afternoon, with a good amount on the porch where she and I played Memory for about an hour.  The kid is good at it!

I took this picture of the poor little face after a day of using a prescription cortisone cream.  It looks way better here then it did.  She’s handling it very well and putting up with twice daily smearings. 

Anyway, the day was spent with my parents, my children and my knitting.  Mom made my favorite for dinner, lasagna and served up some yummy chocolate/chocolate cake!   I swatched one more time for the WRS. This time using a US1 and the Lacis.

I do think this is the winning swatch.  It has the nice open background with an ethereal feel to it, paired with some pretty sharp lace.  Here’s a quick link to the other swatches.  It also helps that I heard back from Lacis that the knots aren’t the norm.  I checked out my other three skeins and they have none.  Now to see if I can exchange the knotty one. I’m itching to get started on this shawl!  The poll, as of last look, wasn’t much help, y’all split pretty evenly on the two yarns with a 13/12 in favor of the Lacis.

I spent the rest of my knitting time split between Tina and the MS3.  Sorry no pictures of either one.  MS3 is now 10 pattern rows into Chart E and Tina is 5 of 9.5 repeats of the center.  After working with all that cobweb-y yarn over the weekend swatching for WRS, the Zephyr for the other two feels so THICK!  Unbelievable huh?

To prevent this from turning into an ‘all lace, all the time’ channel, I did work on the current pair of socks this morning.  I’ve now made it into the cuff. Socks are definitely the purse knitting, with the lace taking center stage everywhere else.  For only knitting these socks on the train, they are coming along quite nicely.  I lost some ground this morning though as I futzed around with, wait for it, a lace rib for the cuff.  But frogged it right before pulling into the station as it just didn’t look right.  It was getting lost in the short color changes in the yarn.  It would be great with longer color runs or a more solid yarn, of which I definitely have both in great supply.  Sock yarn is going to count soon.

Back to the grindstone now….

Craft on!

First, the dark.  That 2.5 hours of torturous interviewing was for naught.  They loved my personality, but thought I was light on the tech.  Sigh.  Maybe not for naught, I did stop on the way home and picked up a few books so I could buff up the tech.  There’s still two more companies still in play, including the project over tech torture where I place #1 so far.  And I have another interview with a different company on Tuesday.  With a little studying of the concepts rather than the application, I can land one of these.

Now for the light!  Thanks to fleegle, I now how a registered legit copy of the WRS!  Share the love with her!  She saved my head from exploding.  I took advantage of the summer Friday yesterday and headed uptown to Habu to check out their superfine lace weight yarns for WRS swatching.  I found two possible contenders.  I’ve spent the lace day and a half swatching and have narrowed it down to two contenders.

1.  Habu Fine Merino A-33 2/48 (top) on a US1
Pro:  Softer, two ply, cheap, blocks nicely
Con: Lace doesn’t seem quite as crisp

2.  Lacis Shetland Cobweb (bottom) on a US0
Pro:  Crisp lace
Con:  Single, very fragile, found a bunch of knots in the single skein I went to wound.

The Habu is on the top and the Lacis is the bottom.  I really can’t decide.  The Habu, being merino, is way softer than the Lacis and seems more airy.  However, the lace just seems sharper in the Lacis.  I dread dealing with all the knots and hope the one skeins is just a defective one.  See Ina, I did swatch!  There were more swatches, but these two are the leads.  The first was a Habu Merino on a 0 that, while nice, just wasn’t very um….

I don’t know.  I also picked up some silk from Habu – Tassar Silk Organzine Twist N-13 35/6×2, which is really close in weight to the silk sold by HK in the cone.  I’m not a huge fan of lace with silk and found the swatch to be crunchy.  Its definitely out of the running.

I can’t decide so I’m asking for input.  Time for a poll.  Please only vote once ….

Could it be, two posts in less than a week?  Oh yes.   Lots to update and  I can’t bear to wait a week as I know I’ll forget something.

1.  Fibery Goodness…

The Loksins are finished.  I grafted the toe last night.  Nice pattern that I would definitely make again, just not in that yarn.  It was splitty and the resulting sock is itchy.  Still, another pair of finished socks for the Summer of Socks.  Weeeeee. 

Yarn:  Lang Jawoll
Needles:  US0
Mods:  smaller needles and I reduced the stitch count from 60 to 56 by pulling two out of each of the plain stockinette sections.    I also did a more straightforward reduction at the toe.

The socks fit perfectly.

I couldn’t decide on the next yarn to use so I had Alex pick from a selection.  He chose these:

He selected these.  It is Stone Barn Fibers Gypsy Girl Creations in the Ominous Skies colorway that I bought from Loopy Ewe a few months back.  Not sure if I blogged it, but I might have.  There’s been a lot of sock yarn in and out recently and I don’t always fess up to it all.  I took this picture this morning at the train station.  Some bloggers use artful arrangements, I use the dashboard of my mommy-mobile   The sock?  Excellent yarn.  I’m loving it.

2.  Job Thing -

I have a second round interview this afternoon, an hour from now really, that could seriously be it.  I heard from my recruiter this morning that they really liked me from the phone interview and that if it goes right, they’d be ready to make an offer.  I might just get that birthday present after all! 

3.  Lace –

I will be knitting that masterpiece after all.  I’ll give details when that pattern is in my hot little hands, but rest assured, my head won’t be exploding anytime soon.  Next up will be the quest for the perfect yarn!

As for Tina?  No new pictures, really, you don’t want to see the same center panel over and over and over again now do you?  I didn’t think so.  I have been diligently working on it every night and have now finished 3.5 of the 9.5 repeats.  Getting there.  Love the yarn but am having a hard time imagining that Zephyr appearing thick compared to whatever WRS will be knit in.

4.  Kidlets –

Dad introduced the monkey boy to Lincoln Logs last night.  Mr. Mechanical took to them like a duck to water!

Kat missed out as she fell asleep in the car on the way home from camp/daycare and slept through the night, with only very brief periods of wakefulness.  Amazing.

Anyway, I’m all atingle with everything that’s going on.  Must change clothes is a bit.  I hate the outfit that I put on this morning and if I’m going to rock the interview, i couldn’t do it feeling crappy in my clothes.  I took advantage of there being an Anne Taylor Loft a short elevator ride away, and their having a sale, to buy me a new skirt and top.  Now I just have to put it on. 

Fingers crossed people!

Craft on!

Time for the weekly (or so) progress (or lack thereof) update.

I.  Job stuff –

The project was very well received and has put me at #1 or 2 on the fellow’s short list.   The bad news is that the company’s HR department has demanded one last attempt to find a qualified candidate without going through a recruiter.  This would be v. bad for me as I was there through a recruiter.

Other good news though, I had two more first round interviews in the interim.  Both of which went very well.  Yesterday’s was a telephone/tech round which ended with the gentleman saying that he’d report back to his manager and that they "would probably, wait, no, definitely have me in for a face-to-face meeting".  I got feedback email from my recruiter that I’d done very well.  Yay me.

So yes, prospects are there.  I’d be very happy with either of them.  I just want it over.  Soon.  In my ideal world, I’d get an offer as a birthday present, though I doubt with how the pace on this all is moving that I’d get it before Sunday.  Yes.  This Sunday.  Big companies just don’t move that fast.  Nice to be marketable though.

II.  Fiber stuff -

a.  Begging -

Okay, before my head really explodes, I HAVE to knit a particular shawl.  I’ve fallen for it.  Hard.  I WANTSSSSS IT.  I NEEEDDDSSSSSS it.  Sadly however the damn thing is not available again until 2010.  What is it you ask?  The Wedding Ring Shawl from Sharon Miller.

I MUST have it.  I’ll buy it, trade for it, rent it (if legal), swap my children for it.  I must have it.  If someone has it and has either finished it or put it on the shelf for future knitting, maybe I can purchase it from you and then sell it back.  I don’t need to keep this pattern  I need to knit it.  Please…. I’m begging….

Oh well.  In the long wait for this, i placed an order for the Unst Bridal Shawl and some cobweb to knit it in.  I’ve also ordered more cobweb to knit the Unst Stole from the book.  Yep, there will be lots of pictures of lace around here in the future.

b.  Actual Knitting

I really have actually been knitting.  In between incessant googling of the WRS to see if someone might be willing to part with the pattern, even temporarily, I have knitted if only to justify further acquisition.

Socks.  Saturday night, in a period of insomnia, i finished the first of the loksin and immediately cast on for the second.  I’m now into the gusset for the second as of the end of lunch today..

Cool sock.  I have made a few mods in that I cut the stitch count from 60 to 56 for my midgy foot, as well as used a US0 instead of the prescribed 1′s.

Thursday night I brought the MS3 to the SNB so I could catch up and finish Clue 2 before 3 was released on Friday.  I came close.  I finished 2 Friday evening and started #3.  I spent a leisurely day on Saturday with the monkeys and the folks.  I had a horrible headache the fortunately did not prevent me from finishing clue 3.

I like it very much so far.  I’m more than ready for clue 4 to come out on Friday.

Saturday night I gave in to a long project calling and finally cast on the Tina Shawl. I’m using Zephyr in Vanilla.  The center is pretty easy and as of last night, I have 3 of the 9.5 repeats done.

Anyone else noticing a theme?  All lace, all the time.  If I could find where I put Essential Tank, I’d work on that lace piece.  See, I knew I was a sock/lace knitter and recent knit activity is proving it!  I was so close to rooting out all the non sock/lace yarn from the stash on Sunday.   It was amusing.  I still might whittle it down as really, the yarn monster is getting way out of control.

That’s the current state of the knitter.  Hopefully there will be some changes to report soon.

Craft on!

Sigh.  Someday there will be more than one post a week.  I want to thank everyone for their words of support after my confusion of last week.  You were all right (and if I haven’t replied directly, I will!).  I needed to listen to my gut and take a pass on what didn’t feel right.  I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can wait for the right thing to come along.  I don’t NEED to take the first job that is offered.   So, I don’t get out of the current situation immediately, I wait it out a little longer but at least I know there is an out coming.  Which makes the current situation just that much easier to bear.  I don’t know what I’d do without you all!

To further enforce my decision, the interview I had last Friday went superbly.  The gentleman liked me and I really liked him.  The job sounds fabulous to say the least.  The next step would be a sample coding project rather than the traditional tech test (which I don’t always do so well on thanks to the lack of formal technical education but I sing with real applications obviously or I wouldn’t still be coding).  I came out of there and reported to my recruiter that that was the one I wanted.  On my ride home I got a phone call from them that they had just emailed me the project to work on.  Sweet.  I read the specs when I got home, it called for two web pages that would do a few things.  They didn’t have to be working pages, but mock ups, wire frames, etc.  They just had to show that you could do the kind of work the job called for.  It was due in a week (today actually).  Cakewalk.  I put together a working website.  No mock ups for me, but also included a Word document that contained screenshots of the thing in operation, as well as outlining what I did, what the assumptions I programmed under and also, if those assumptions were wrong, what would change under a new design.  I put together something that can be extendable without any human intervention.  I’m quite happy with what I did and sent it all, doc and source code, in Tuesday night, two days ahead of the deadline. 

Now the funny piece.  As I was replying to the initial email, I noticed several emails addresses.  One was for the recruiter’s office and none of the rest were for the hiring manager.  Oy.  They’d sent the project to all the candidates.  I ditched that email and opted to follow the directions in the project specs and forwarded it directly to the hiring manager, cc’ed to the recruiter.  Not everyone noticed what I did.  Wednesday morning I opened my email and lo and behold, what was there but someone else’s submission.  Naturally I had to take a peek.  Lets just say I feel even better about what I produced after seeing her work.  We’ll see how the manager feels.  I should be hearing today (fingers crossed) about when he’d like me to come in and discuss it.

I also had another interview yesterday afternoon that went pretty well. Initial feedback was good but I’m waiting for more detail.  And for giggles, I applied online for a position with Ann Taylor.  Their clothes fit way better and that’s a discount I would REALLY love!

All in all, things are looking darn good for a sooner rather than later departure.

Mixed in with all this, there has been knitting.  I finished the socks from my hand spun.  These babies went down Monday night.  Details in the completed album page.

They are as about fraternal as a pair of socks can get.

Letting no moss collect on my knitting needles, I started a new pair.  I’d just seen Nancy’s finished Loksins and purchased the pattern from Ms.TMW that day, so in my LIFO queue, naturally they came first.   I rooted around in the yarn stash briefly looking for the right one.  It wasn’t long before I found it. 

What better color to use for these socks huh?  This is the third or fourth different sock pattern attempt for this yarn, I don’t even remember which anymore.  Witness the wrappage around the right end of the skein.   This one is sticking though..

This was this morning.  I’m halfway through the foot as of the end of lunch.  Along with the MS3, this is going to the SnB tonight.  The color in the first shot is far closer to the real one.  The orange is seriously washed out in the second, as is the colors in my skirt for that matter.  Funny, there is no dark blue at all in the skirt, its actually a chocolate brown.

Anyone know what this is?….

Craft on!

First some obligatory fiber content:  I’m just shy of the heel shaping on the second of the Tulip socks as of now.  I should have it started during the commute home tonight.  I did manage to finish the first clue of the MS3 last night.  YAY!  So now I’m ready for clue 2 which is to be posted tomorrow.

….and now the real reason for a post, the second in the same week as the last.  Oh my.  I’ve gotten a few phone calls today from my recruiter.  The same guy who is handling the law firm thing and he asked me if I would be interested in continuing to interview while waiting for the firm.  While he’s pretty confident that an offer is indeed coming from the law firm, he’d be remiss in not advising me to be aggressive though if I told him I wanted to wait, he’d support me.  Well that’s fine.  I appreciate it.  So while I could do that job at the law firm and the other open prospect that is still somewhat on the table is at the other end of the spectrum, I’m not 100% enamored with the whole law firm thing.  It sounds, still, a little too touchy-feely hand-holding user support to make me happy for very long.  I may be wrong about the position, but my gut says that it is wrong for me.  So I said, yes.  If something better is out there, then by all means, I’ll continue to interview (as much as I hate it).  Sigh.  Well he can set something up for tomorrow:  12:30 (Nancy, I  have to reschedule our lunch till after your vacation ). 

He called back about a half hour later, would I entertain the idea of going back to BN?  But this time, it wouldn’t be .com, but the bookstore.  Oh hell yeah.  He’s working on that now.  I just heard from him, the BN guy is on vacation and back in the office next week so he’ll proceed then.

And then, I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter I worked with briefly last year that wanted to know my Oracle skills.  Having gotten burned recently at the last two companies with having only passable Oracle skills, I may have downgraded them a tad.  Though he did proceed to see if I was looking anyway.  Turns out he has a position for a C#/Sql Server (My preferred database) in the Montvale area  (read drive to work) that he’ll pitch me on tomorrow.  I sent him an updated resume.

I’m seriously thinking that all these events, taken as a whole, are some message from the big guy that I shouldn’t be taking any offer from the law firm.  Sure it is a decent job, but is it really the right job.  There’s a bit of it that is making me nervous, like that they haven’t "teched" me at all but are chasing me down.  As eager as I am to leave this position, the first offer isn’t necessarily the same as the "right" offer.  Hell.  I’m seriously confused.  I’ve talked myself into the law firm position.  The price is good.  The flexibility is there.  But really, it seems really boring and way too much like the job I don’t like and already have (which carries a pretty decent discount) and no lawyers (yours truly excluded .

Sigh…