Legobamaland

Last week we took the kids to Legoland. We had free tickets and it's only about half an hour from our house, so even though we just went a couple of months ago, we thought, why not? We wandered, as we always do, through Miniland, where you can see some of the great cities of the world rendered in Legos, in remarkably accurate detail.

It was all very familiar, until we reached Washington, D.C., where there was definitely something different in the air. Can you tell what it is?

How about now?

Whatever side of the political aisle you side with, you have to admit this is some impressive Lego building!

Check out the realistic details:

I wonder if those limos are bulletproof?

And of course, what would an inauguration be without police?

But really, I was dying to look inside one of those portapotties (notice the realistic line) to see just how detailed the builders were!

Oy.

I finished the first sleeve of Mossy last night.

I ripped out the first sleeve of Mossy today.

Although it turned out exactly as I had planned, I didn't like the finished product. Too narrow for the design. It really needs a more relaxed sleeve shape. So I'll give it another shot. Times like this, it's good to be knitting with aran weight. And top down. Definitely, top down.

The Joys of Modern Banking

A couple of weeks ago, I got one of those balance transfer offers from my credit card company (0% interest! Fixed APR!), complete with handy-dandy pre-printed checks (Use them now! Buy that big screen! You know you want to!). As I always do, I shredded the checks and threw them out. A few minutes later, as I was paying the monthly bills, it occurred to me that I have a loan that I'm currently paying off at a significantly higher variable interest rate. I could actually use one of those handy-dandy checks, pay it off, then finish paying the loan at the lower, fixed rate. This seemed like a good idea. But alas, I had shredded the checks. No problem, I thought, I'll just call the credit card company and have them send me some more.

There's an unwritten rule of modern life: if you call customer service, and you get someone in India, things are not going to go well for you. Unfortunately, there is generally no alternative to slogging through what is bound to be a confusing, irritating, and lengthy "customer service" experience. My experience with my new BFF (we'll call him "Sam") was no exception.

Me: "Yes, I received some balance transfer checks in the mail and shredded them by mistake. Could you please send me some more?"

Sam: [insert unintelligible accent here] "No, ma'am, I am sorry, but we cannot send checks in response to a telephone request."

Me: "Um. Okay. How do I get some then?"

Sam: "I am sorry, ma'am, but we cannot reissue checks."

Me: "Um. All right. Are you going to be sending any more any time soon?"

Sam: "I am sorry, ma'am, but I cannot give you that information.

Me. "Oh. Okay. Ah. Is there some other way I can make a balance transfer?"

Sam: "Yes, ma'am. I can handle that for you over the phone."

Me: [Resisting the urge to point out the sheer idiocy of refusing to MAIL checks to my ACTUAL, REAL ADDRESS, but accepting authorization for the transfer of large amounts of money over the phone] "Oh. Okay. That will be lovely."

A lengthy and tedious conversation followed, which I will not repeat verbatim for fear of losing those of you who have stuck with me this far. Suffice it to say that bank account numbers were given, credit accounts were listed, names were named. Finally, Sam put me on hold for, oh, a day or two. When he came back, he said,

Sam: "Ma'am, is the balance you are transfering an account from ******** Bank?"

Me: "Why, yes. Yes it is."

Sam: "I am sorry, ma'am, but we cannot transfer an account balance from ******** Bank."

Me: "Why is that?"

Sam: "Because ******** Bank is owned by [our company]. We cannot transfer our own accounts."

Me: [Resisting the urge to point out he could have saved us both a lot of time by asking me this question 12 hours ago] "Uh."

Silence.

Me: "Well. Um. Thanks for your help."

Sam: "But I can make a transfer into your checking account and you can use it to pay off the loan. The transfer fee is also only half that for a balance transfer."

Me: [Flatly dumbfounded, because, really, who WOULDN'T choose this option if it were actually presented to begin with?] "Really. Well. Right to my checking account, huh? And it'll only cost me half as much in transfer fees? Yeah. Okay. Let's DO THAT."

After another lengthy process, Sam assured me that everything was done and I should look for the money via wire transfer in "three to five business days."

I, foolishly, believed him.

That was two weeks ago, or, in banking terms, TEN business days. I have seen neither hide nor hair of the money, nor of any reference to a transfer. Today, I decided, I would brave the customer service line and try to figure out what had gone wrong.

The credit card company saved me the trouble. There was a letter from them in today's mail, informing me that they have tried to contact me about a balance transfer request, but since they have been unable to get ahold of me, they have cancelled the transfer. If I wanted to make a transfer, I should call [oh, yeah] customer service.

Unable to get ahold of me? I have three land lines. I have a cell phone. I have two email addresses. I have lived at the same address for more than ten years. The credit card company has all of this contact information. Unless they were trying to reach me by smoke signal, I can't imagine what trouble they could possibly have had getting ahold of me.

So I sucked it up and called customer service. I got an agent who sounded exactly like the first one I talked to. Maybe it was. So we'll call him Sam.

Me: "Yes, I set up a balance transfer by phone a couple of weeks ago, and today I got a letter saying you have been unable to reach me and have cancelled the transfer. I'd like to try again."

Sam: "Yes, ma'am, I can help you with that. I see here you had a balance transfer and it was cancelled. You want to transfer the money into your checking account?"

Me: "Yes, please."

Sam: "Can you give me the routing number and account number, please?"

I do.

Sam: "I must place you on hold while I check this."

Me: "No problem."

Quite a while later:

Sam: "I apologize for the lengthy hold. What is the name of the bank for this routing number?"

I tell him.

Sam: "I am sorry, but this is an incorrect routing number."

I repeat the routing number. Twice.

Sam: "I am sorry, but there is no record of this number."

[At this point I reminded myself rather forcefully that it is not a good idea to lose one's cool with Sam in India who has his fingers poised directly over one's credit rating, no matter how much one might like to make some sort of nasty comment.]

Me: "Well. I am looking at the check. That is the routing number printed on the check. That is also the routing number I use every month when I pay my bill on your website. I use that routing number every time I make a payment from that account, which is pretty much every day. And, actually, it's your bank. I'm not sure what to tell you."

Sam: "Oh. Okay."

And he continues to process the request. Or so I think. He could just be putting me on at this point, and I'd never know it.

Sam: "So you want to have $X transfered into your checking account?"

Me: "No. I want to have $Y transfered into my checking account."

Sam: "I'm sorry,ma'am, but I cannot transfer that amount."

Me: "Um. Why not?"

Sam: "Because I cannot make a transfer for the same amount within 25 days of a previous transfer."

Me: "But, um, there was no previous transfer."

Sam: "You got a letter approving a transfer."

Me: "No. I got a letter telling me the transfer I requested had been cancelled." This seemed like an important distinction to me.

Sam: "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I cannot make a transfer for the same amount."

Me: [After a moment's careful thought] "Can you make a transfer for a different amount?" [You've got to ask the right questions. I'm slowly getting the hang of this, I think, and I'm starting to get excited as I see the possibility of bringing this transaction to a close sometime before my head explodes.]

Sam: "Yes, ma'am. What amount would you like me to transfer?"

Me: "Just change the amount by $50."

Sam: "$50 more or less?"

Me: "I really couldn't...$50 less. Make it $50 less. Please."

Sam: "Yes, ma'am. That will be $Y-50 at X% interest fixed for the life of the loan with a transfer fee of $Z. Once I submit this, it cannot be changed. Do I have your approval to submit it?"

Me: "Yes. Yes, you do. Please submit it." [Submit it NOW! Before I totally lose it and start screaming at Sam in India who's probably not to blame but who is about to feel the full force of my annoyance and that would be a BAD thing, because as we've already established, he has his fingers waaaaay to freakin' close to my credit rating, and...]

Sam: "The transfer will be made by wire transfer in the next three to five business days. If there is any problem, someone will contact you by phone within the next three days. Is there anything else I can help you with?" [Yes, actually. You see, I've heard all this before, and it didn't work out quite that way. Could you possibly arrange for me to speak to someone who actually has some AUTHORITY, or better yet some ACCOUNTABILITY? Or maybe I could talk to that guy who decided to outsource customer service to India, along with all the jobs that used to be in the U.S. I'd really love to talk to him. I have a few questions for him. What's that? Monaco? He's living it up in Monaco because the unemployment rate in the U.S. was bumming him out? Yeah, I can see how that would get a person down. That and all those foreclosed houses. Oh, and the vacant commercial spaces are kind of a downer, too...]

Me: "No, thank you. That's all. Thank you so much for your help."

Any bets what happens next?

Mossy

Since finishing Wisteria a few days ago--bringing my finished-but-unblogged sweater total to four, I believe--I have been without a sweater on the needles. Installing the zipper on the Aran Cardigan distracted me for a while, and I do still need to do something about the pockets, but I was starting to get an annoying little twitch in my left eyelid, and every time I sat down on the sofa, my hands would start air knitting all by themselves. In the interests of my own mental health, I had to find something to cast on.

Despite the many, many patterns in my Rav queue--not to mention the many, many other patterns saved on my computer, and the large box of patterns awaiting my attention in the stash closet--I couldn't find anything that made me want to cast on. What I really wanted was a plain, top-down raglan turtleneck in an interesting yarn. I have a couple of lots of Noro in the stash, but I didn't feel like stripes. I have a bunch of solids, too, but I didn't feel like solids. What I felt like was this:

This, as you can see, is Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed, which is the same donegal tweed as Takhi and Kilcarra (they're all from the same mill, I believe) but with the addition of a bit of angora to soften it. I bought it quite recently, on clearance from an online store in the UK, and it's been calling my name ever since. I planned to use it for another aran sweater, but I'm just not feeling the love. I don't want to work with it; I just want to play with it.

So top-down raglan turtleneck it is. I figure, I can probably get it done in time to wear it at least a couple of times before the endless summer rears its ugly head again and I have to put all the sweaters away for another six or seven or eight months.

Of course, being me, I couldn't let it go at that. As much as I love knitting plain stockinette--and I say with no sarcasm at all that I love plain stockinette--I was concerned that an entire one piece sweater all in plain stockinette in the round might just get a little...boring. Maybe a nice cable down the front would help. Something a little different. Something bold, that wouldn't get lost in the textured, tweedy yarn. Like the one from Norah Gaughan's Cire Perdue (from Norah Gaughan volume 3). I am fascinated by this cable. I am not, however, fascinated by the background of reverse stockinette, which I don't much like under the best of circumstances. And frankly, the idea of purling an entire sweater in the round makes me a little twitchy. So I just borrowed the cable design and put it into my stockinette sweater as a panel, right down the front. See?

I'm really enjoying knitting this. The yarn is both soft and tweedy, the color makes me think of every growing plant I've ever seen, and the cable is dramatic and distinctive without being heavy. I think I have the sizing right and my raglan increases properly spaced, but I won't know for certain until I divide for the sleeves and can put the thing on a piece of scrap yarn and try it on. But that's part of the charm of knitting without a net, isn't it? If I'm wrong, I can always rip it out and try again. Heaven knows, I'm an expert at that.

Zipper Installation Unzipped

After staring at the Aran Cardigan hanging over a kitchen chair for two weeks (where I deliberately left it to spur myself to some sort of productive action), I finally tackled the zipper installation. It's not my favorite activity, but sometimes only a zipper will do. A few people commented on an earlier post that they have avoided attempting to install a zipper because it seems so hard. I've made two zippered cardigans before this one, both before I learned that installing a zipper is supposed to be hard, so I was never afraid to try it. In all honesty, I can assure you it is not hard in either concept or execution, even with my negligible sewing skills. If I can manage it, you surely can! For those of you who might not have tried it before, I took pictures of the process so I could prove it to you.

If you recall, the zipper I ordered for this sweater turned out to be much too long. So the first order of business was shortening it. Thanks to Sue, I knew that I needed to remove the zipper stops at the top, cut the zipper to the right length, then reattach the stops. The little things at the top are, naturally, the stops:

Alas, after twenty minutes with a tiny screwdriver and a needlenose pliers, I discovered that, in an excess of caution, the manufacturer of this particular zipper not only crimps the stop in place, but also glues them down, to be sure they won't come loose. And I'm sure they would be happy to know that nothing short of a nuclear blast is going to separate one of their zipper stops from the zipper. Not to worry, though. I happened to have a zipper repair kit handy, and there were extra stops in the kit. So I put the zipper in place and decided where to cut:

[This, by the way, is the actual, real color of the sweater, at least on my monitor.]

Unfortunately, as soon as I cut it, the fabric began to fray, so I sealed it with some clear nail polish and then installed the new stops by crimping them over the end of the zipper with the needlenose pliers:

With the zipper shortened to the proper length, I began pinning it in place:

Leaving the zipper zipped together, I positioned it so that the selvedge stitch covered half the teeth of the zipper. I like my zippers to be hidden. By positioning the selvedge stitch half over the teeth on each side, the zipper will be completely covered when the zipper is closed. It's important not to stretch the knitting while you're pinning so that you don't end up with a weirdly puckered zipper when it's sewn in.

Once I had the first side pinned all the way up, I started sewing. Here you can see how the selvedge stitch partially covers the teeth of the zipper:

I sewed straight through the zipper and the knitted fabric one stitch in from the edge, and as close to the zipper teeth as possible:

I tried to make small, even, straight stitches, but as you can see from the back of the zipper, I'm no seamstress. That's okay; no one will see the back of your zipper. You don't need to know how to sew. Just stitch as neatly as you can and take your time. It's not fun (at least, it's not fun for me), but it's not difficult.

Here's the first side all sewn in:

To sew the zipper to the other front, I unzipped the zipper and pinned the loose half to the opposite side. (You could pin it in place with the zipper closed, but I find this too difficult.)


To make sure I had the zipper lined up properly, I then rezipped the zipper:

It seemed to be lined up correctly, so I unzipped it again and sewed the second half of the zipper in place, and voila!

A completed zipper!

And almost completely hidden:


Now if I can just bring myself to tackle the concept of zippered pockets...

The Budding Artist

My nine year old brought this home from art class last night. His own choice of subject, still life, charcoal on paper. I was most impressed.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I measured for a 24" zipper. I special ordered a 24" zipper. This is not a 24" zipper. Clearly. I can hear the Knitting Goddess chuckling from here.