The good news is that this means that designers will usually define their special stitches right there in the pattern, so they could call it a Shazbut Special, and it wouldn’t matter because they tell you what it is.

The bad news is that finding more help on these stitch patterns isn’t easy. That pattern the designer called the Shazbut Special might be called Busker’s Delight by the person who posted the tutorial video to youtube.

I bring this up because I recently came across a pattern that called for the moss stitch. Before this point in my life, I was only aware of the moss stitch as refered to by knitters. Luckily, there was a link to a youtube tutorial.

I made up a swatch:

We’ll call this one “Moss Stitch HalfDouble-SlipStitch” because it’s made up of a pattern of *hdc, slst* repeated, with each subsequent row made up of doing an hdc into a slst, and a slst into an hdc.

Those instructions might sound a little bit familiar to some of you, as they are eerily similar to this:

which we’ll call “Moss Stitch Double-Single”, and some of you might recognise as the stitch pattern I use in my Diet Coke Bottle Cozies. Basically, it is a row of *dc, sc* repeated, and in subsequent rows you work a dc into a sc, and a sc into a dc. I didn’t know it was called “moss stitch” when I chose it for my cozies… I just thought it looked neat. Not too stretchy, not too tight.

Finally, there is a third stitch pattern that is referred to as “moss stitch”:

and we’ll call it “Moss Stitch Single-Chain1″ for it is made by repeating *sc, ch1* a bunch of times (and ending with a sc), and in subsequent rows you work your sc into the ch1 space.

I’d say this one has the nicest drape of the three moss stitches, and it didn’t curl up in the corners like the others. I do believe I’m going to make a blanket using this stitch. We’ll see!

Extra bonus today:

I tried out the stitch height experiment with two colours.

It’s a bit wonky, but I think that would go away with a larger example. What do you think?

(Click to see a bigger version!)

I’ve decided to forget about “Let’s play”, mostly because it took most of the day just to chart out the rest… and most of the rest of the day to figure out where the middle is. If it looks off-centre, that’s only because the middle turns out to be right near the right edge of the E in “THE”.

I think I’m going to go back to making circle-in-a-square motifs… chaining letters is fiddly and annoying, and not condusive to following Rome.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Sunday, August 30, 2009 started early for us. Up at 5:30am, I headed over to the Always Open convenience store to get some milk and a coffee for Charles. It was moving day, and mostly everything was packed; we didn’t want to have to move an entire kitchen’s worth of food, so the coffee-making supplies were packed and when we ran out of milk on Saturday, we decided to rely on the nearby convenience store, whose name really bears repeating: Always Open.

When I got there, I saw this:

(This is a story of epic proportions with lots of pictures, read on under the cut!)

The door was locked, and most of the lights were off. Normally when this happens there is a sign saying, “back in 10 mins” which, when you think about it, isn’t very helpful unless you know when the sign was posted, but is a lot more helpful than what I saw, which was nothing but a closed store with a “Open 24-7” sign mocking me.

So, off to McDonalds we went. Charles got his coffee, along with some breakfast, and I got two cartons of over-priced milk for my cereal.

After breakfast we packed up our essentials that had to wait until the last minute, and did some cleaning.

We had lots of time before needing to head out, so we loaded the piano into Dad’s car, which we borrowed for the week while my parents are at Disney (we were invited to go with them, alas, we were moving!). Once the piano was in, we filled the nooks and crannies up with mostly soft things – pillows, sheets, towels, and found there was room for our framed pictures behind the driver’s seat.

Moving the base of the piano into the car, I managed to smack it into my leg. The bandage is covering up a half-inch long gash which is surrounded by a nasty-looking bruise:

We still had about an hour to go before we needed to leave for the new place to get the keys, but we decided to leave then anyway, given that there was only one chair left in the old place, and really nothing much left to do. We killed time at Starbucks and our new drug store, then headed over to the new building.

We got our keys, and went through the check-in process, making sure there were no problems with the place before we moved in. I took some pictures while it was still empty:

Then it was time to head back to the old place. On the way, we stopped for lunch, then at the bank to get the money out for the movers. We got there with half an hour to spare, so we set up the folding chairs in the open garage and waited for the movers.

1:30 rolls around, and there’s no sign of the movers, though that’s when they were supposed to be there. Charles called them. It turns out, they’ve been delayed at their morning move and will be “a bit late”. Specifically, he says they’ll be there by 3pm. Well, we had the elevator at the new place booked from 3-5, so that was cutting it awfully close! And given how slowly they were obviously going at the other move, well, I was quite worried by this point.

3:00, and still no sign of them. Charles calls again. And again. And again. Then on my phone, thinking the guy is call screening. He got through that time, so… They’re almost done!

3:30, Charles calls again and gets the voicemail, but the guy calls back and says they’re on their way! Unfortunately for that guy (and his reputation, did I mention this was Innercity Moving and Storage?), he forgot to lock the keys on his cell phone and it auto-redialled Charles’ phone number. We listened for a bit and noticed that what we were hearing were distinctly moving sounds, and very obviously not driving sounds.

That’s right, the movers totally lied to us. They weren’t coming. It was now 4pm and we were officially screwed. Most of our stuff was sitting in boxes in our old landlord’s garage:

with a small handful of larger furniture down in the basement apartment that Charles couldn’t move on his own:

(though, the piano shown in the picture was in the car)

We decided to make the most of the elevator window at the new place and at least unload the car. Once that was done, we’d figure out what to do next.

When we get to the new place we notice a few dozen people leaving, all at once. What is that sound? Ah. The fire alarm. The elevators are locked. People are evacuating.

One of the evacuees, what looked like a young high school student flung open a door on the car next to mine, and it hit my Dad’s car. (I checked later and couldn’t see where it hit, so that was a bit of a blessing, I suppose!)

Completely pissed off at this point, I tear away from the building. There was nothing else to do, really. We couldn’t go inside, and our elevator window would be long closed by the time everything was sorted out.

So, we had a car full of soft things and an expensive, hard to replace digital piano; a new apartment we couldn’t get to; and an old apartment that was completely packed up.

We decided to go out for dinner and figure out what to do. Well, the logical conclusion at the time was to head to my parents’ house. It was the only place I could think of where there were extra beds, and a safe place for the piano to stay until we sorted things out.

(Here I’m surfing Craftster and watching Mythbusters)

The original plan had us moving on Sunday, then off work on Monday to rest and unpack a little. Well, Sunday was completely shot, so Monday ended up being the day to run around and try to figure out what the hell we were going to do.

Monday morning we woke up early again, and I changed into my last set of clean clothing. I only had this clothing because I packed some extras just in case something went wrong. “Be prepared!” and all that. We did some grocery shopping, then headed to our new apartment to unload what we had (sans piano).

Not wanting to go back to Hamilton that night, since we both had to work the next day, we decided to see if we could fit our mattress into the car. It took quite a bit of work, but we managed to fold it in half (no worries, it’s just air pockets and memory foam) and tie it up with some rope we found in the car, then crammed it into the back of the station wagon. We drove it over to the new place, conveniently arriving just as everyone was getting home from work. Most of our new neighbours were quite understanding, so we did manage to get it upstairs, and untied (collapsing on it shortly thereafter).

Our rest was short-lived as I had managed to find a friend who was available to help Charles move the last of the furniture out of the old place. This needed to be done as soon as possible because the new tenant was due, and the landlord wanted to clean and paint before he arrived. We decided to stop by the McDonalds drive-through on the way back to the old place.

I placed our order, paid for it, and got most of our food, but the McNuggets were going to take some extra time, so I was told to pull ahead and they’d run them out to us. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, Charles went inside to see what was going on. It turns out that the girl at the window had gone on break and forgotten about us. She gave us two packs of McNuggets instead of one. When we got to the old apartment, naturally all of the food, except for the McNuggets, were cold… and the microwave had already been packed. Swell.

Charles and my friend moved the furniture into the garage while I went and got gas in the car. By the time I got back they were done; my friend had gone home. We grabbed a couple of boxes of things that looked important, then headed back to the new place.

I washed the sheets, and were able to sleep in our own bed in our new place for the first time. Naturally, I didn’t sleep well; not enough noise, if you can believe it!

Tuesday morning came, and since it was Sept. 1st, there was no way we were going to find movers or even book the elevator, so we decided to go to work, as originally planned. Of course, in the original plan I was to have Monday off to rest, and likely ice the living daylights out of my bum knee, but that didn’t happen. So, Tuesday was starting out with a throbbing knee. That morning was also when I discovered that I had no clean clothes. It was too late to do a load of laundry, so I put Monday’s clothes back on. Lovely.

After work on Tuesday I went to the new place, grabbed the car, drove back to the old place; I was on a mission: FIND CLOTHES! I couldn’t find the box I was looking for, but I did find the laundry basket, which was full of the previous week’s dirty clothes. Perfect! Inside was also one of my cereal bowls, which was nice because that morning I had eaten my breakfast out of a large serving bowl. I grabbed a couple of random boxes, figuring the ones that were easiest to get to were most likely our essentials that we packed last. I also did a cursory search for a box that might contain the modem. You see, we didn’t need it at the old place, so it got packed up in a maddeningly unlabeled box several days before, and we couldn’t remember which one it was. (Luckily, we did have it narrowed down to all of the unlabeled boxes. I had labeled the ones I packed, so that cut out about half of the possibilities.)

No luck on the modem, but I did some laundry and I had clean clothes!

Wednesday was another early day. We had booked new movers, S & Sons, which we saw an ad for on the bulletin board in our new mailroom, for 7:30am to meet us up at our storage unit. We weren’t taking any chances with them running late at a previous move, and the only morning elevator window available was from 9-11. These movers arrived early, and were quite professional:

The unit was packed up by 8am, then it was off to the old place. I still had my key, but I wasn’t sure if the new tenant was in yet, and I didn’t want to just barge in. With the key I had, we’d have to go in the basement entrance, then use a key inside to get into the garage. Instead, I went to the front of the house, rang the bell, and waited for my landlord’s parents to answer and then open the garage for us. Naturally there was no answer. Even though I’d told his father just the day before that we’d be there between 8 and 9 the following morning, and it was clear from the open balcony door that someone was home, for whatever reason they weren’t answering the door. I rang the bell again and waited, and still no answer. Crap!

I decided to risk it and try going in the basement door. I knocked first, waited, got no answer, then let myself in. Looking down the stairs I couldn’t see any furniture or boxes, so that was a bit of a relief. Unfortunately, the key to the garage door wasn’t there anymore!

The movers had arrived by this point, and we were paying them by the hour, so I called our old landlord’s cell phone. He confirmed that his parents were indeed home, and said he’d call them to tell them it was me at the door. So, I went back around to ring the bell again, which I feel the need to point out, did absolute wonders for my bum knee.

We get into the garage and the movers start working. Charles has been helping them the whole time because, again, we were paying them by the hour, so we managed to get away just shortly after 9.

The owner of the good moving company had a theory as to what happened with the bad ones. He said that it wasn’t uncommon for some movers to have someone call up and they’d quote them a price, maybe $60/h. Then someone else would call asking about the same day and time and they would quote them maybe $75/h. And on it would go, and when the day came they’d go and move whoever agreed to pay the highest amount and not bother to even call the others to say they weren’t coming.

I wouldn’t have believed such things happened if it weren’t for the fact that that theory fit suspiciously well with what actually happened to us. Again, the bad movers were Innercity Moving and Storage. Remember: they’ll probably screw you in favour of a higher bidder.

We got to the new place, with the movers arriving shortly thereafter, and they started moving us in. They were quite nice and even offered to move the heavier items in first, just in case we ran out of time with the elevator. We did end up running overtime, but whoever had the elevator booked after us hadn’t shown up yet, so we ended up getting everything in just fine. I even found the box the modem was in!

Once everything was settled, Charles got to work getting the internet connection up and running. We’d been relying on our smart phones for days; it would be nice to use our computers for a change!

The modem is plugged in, but the DSL light isn’t on. He checks and finds that there’s nothing at all wrong with the modem or its wireless signal, the problem is that the line is dead. Now, hold on a minute, we had Bell come in the Friday before we moved in so that they could set this up before we got here. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

We called Bell and they said they’d send a technician on Thursday after 5. I got home from work at 4:30. Since the internet wasn’t set up, that meant my VoIP phone wasn’t set up, and it is set to automatically forward all calls to my cell phone whenever it isn’t working (for any reason). The buzzer to get into the building is set to call the VoIP phone, which means it would actually call my cell phone, which means, had the Bell guy arrived before I got home, I would have known about it. We waited until about 8:30pm, then decided to call Bell and see what was up. They said that the service window was from 5-9, so the guy had a bit of time yet and might still show up, and that we were still on his schedule; he hadn’t made any kind of note about not being able to make it, or not being able to get into the building. We weren’t holding our breath that he’d show, and naturally, he didn’t. (I don’t know if you’re sensing a theme here… that’s three services we’d used during this move where someone just didn’t show up, with no notice or anything). More calls to Bell, and they say they’ll send someone on Friday. Right-o!

Friday was a half day for me at work. I went up to Davisville Station after work to change the address my Metropasses are sent to, and found that while they have elevators running from track level to the mezzanine, they have only an up-escalator between the mezzanine and street level, which is where the Metropass office is. Because my knee hasn’t been through enough already this week!

I head home and spend a lovely afternoon sitting out on the balcony, crocheting, and watching the condo construction.

Charles gets home later on, and we wait for the Bell guy. He finally arrives, pokes around looking for access panels, then announces that he needs access to the “telephone room”. I’ve never lived in an apartment building, and had never heard of such a thing. It turns out that it’s in the basement, and you need a key to get at it. And it’s late in the evening on a Friday before a long weekend. I call the building’s after hours number, tell them what is happening, and they paged the Super and told him what we needed.

Clearly, we got our internet sorted out (though, there was a tense moment on Saturday after I accidentally knocked the modem off of the back of the chair and we lost internet briefly. I had a long overdue meltdown over it. I mean, come on, after that week? It could easily have been something even less important that set me off!)

On Saturday we took advantage of still having the car and went and did some more grocery shopping, hoping to get the heavy things we needed that would keep well. By the time we got home, I had just about had it. I was tired, both physically and emotionally, so we decided to just stay home. I crocheted some, read a little bit, and picked up the shattered remains of my abandoned farm on Farmville.

At that point the new place wasn’t really feeling like home quite yet. I felt like I was on vacation, staying at a rich relative’s apartment that they weren’t using. After all, we went from a (very nice) basement apartment, with 1 bedroom, a kitchenette, and only one window, which was north-facing and underground in a window well, to a 2 bedroom apartment, with a real kitchen, room for an actual dining table, and a balcony with a lovely view of the lake, on the 10th floor of a pretty amazing building (there’s a free gym downstairs! And a movie theater room! And a board room! And a spectacular party room! And we can take the garbage out whenever we want to instead of trying to find a place for it to rot under the sink!). Adding to the feeling of just being on vacation was the fact that I only had a fraction of my wardrobe unpacked (about what I’d take with me for a week’s vacation).

I had a gig in Hamilton this morning, so Charles came with me and we stopped by my parents’ house and picked up my piano. We got it moved in this afternoon, and the place already feels more like home. ^_^

All that’s left is to move the yarn back, but I’m trying to hold off on that a bit until we can unpack some more boxes to make room for it.

So, clearly this move was brought to us by Murphy’s Law. A shame, really, as I prefer:

Cole’s Law: thinly sliced cabbage.