Perling and Knitting Rules

I was perling today. The computer kind this time. Perhaps it was because I've gotten to the straight part of my sock and all I'm doing is knitting, so I have to find my perling (purling) elsewhere. It was just a little text manipulation script but it made me realize that I haven't done any perl in a very long time. I've been doing Java and XML and a smidgen of DOS batch files and that's pretty much it. It was not pretty. I had to google up some tutorials which are never really what I'm looking for, but I piece together a Frankenstein of what I'm looking for and see if it runs. Truth be told I have never really liked perl. I titled my blog for the alliteration :) Don't get me wrong, I Respect perl with a capital R. I know it's powerful, but the fact that it isn't obvious or second nature enough for me to not need comments is frustrating because no one uses comments. OK, so I'll admit. It's the regular expressions. They make me feel like I'm eating alphabet soup. Let's just string together a bunch of characters and see what happens. I've gotten better with them since using them in some of my Java tools, but since I've never really sat down and "learned" them the way I sat down and learned other computer concepts means that I have to look them up every time. I am not an intuitive programmer. I am a step by step methodical programmer. Probably why I have so much trouble costing future work: because I just don't know how long it will take until I do it. Anyway, that's what I did with my Saturday morning. Why? Because my checking account register is always off by $5. Almost always it's in my favor, but it still bothers me because I happen to have a degree in Math from an accredited University and while I know that no one is perfect, it still bugs me that my arithmetic is off, and that it's never consistent in the amount it is off by. It *really* bugs me. So I decided that I would download my bank history in a csv format. That's comma separated values for those not down with the TLAs. The problem came when I realized that none of the spreadsheet software that I own likes csv format... What?!? I thought that was the point of csv, that it was a generic format that you could import into any spreadsheet application, and presto, have the fabulous beginnings of every type A's dream. Nope, at least not on my machine. *sigh* So I decided to use a little perl script to convert it to a format that my computer would like and there was born my futile quest for the right perl script.

Then this afternoon I went to Barnes and Noble to finish reading Knitting Rules because I suffer from this disease that causes me to pick up books at bookstores and chew through chapters while sitting in the bookstore cafe, until I get a good ways through(let's say halfway), decide that I'd very much like to continue reading the book, pay for the book and bring it home only to never touch the book again, or read a scant dozen or so pages over the course of a month as the book languishes on my bedside shelf because once I get to bed there's pretty much no more brainpower left to fuel the concept of reading. So I devised this plan, to never buy a book at the store without reading it first. If I finish the book while I'm at the store and deem that I still want to buy it then great! But at least I *finish* it. There are a few problems with this plan. The first being that I can't read the book unless I'm at the store. The second being that instead of a bookmark I need some way of remembering where I was when I left the store so that I don't waste valuable reading time once I get back to the store. I've used chapter headings and page numbers both to somewhat good effect. The third problem is the most serious and that's what happened today: the book sells out and they have no more copies left at the store. This happened with Knitting Rules. I picked it up on a lark since I'm vaguely new to the whole knitting thing and found it hilarious and informative, so I kept reading. At about a third of the way through the book I thought it might make a nice gift to my mother-in-law for Mother's day. Something small and not too extravagant, but enough to let her know that I did in fact recognize that she is someone's mother and that I do bother to take note of her interests. But then I had my doubts. You see, she's been knitting for years and the tastes of a relative novice are not always to be trusted in the art of gift-giving, so I put it off. Then when I was about halfway through I realized that it would make a suitable birthday gift for my friend Kemper, and I decided to buy it for her and use the opportunity to finish reading it before I wrapped it to give away. You see I thought that by setting a firm deadline of the very next day that it would foil the book curse. It didn't. By the time I was finished running errands that day I was exhausted and mildly flu-ish, so I took my NyQuil and went to sleep. I wrapped the book without any reading the next day. I read about a quarter more the next time I was at the bookstore, and having read 3 quarters of the book I thought to myself, only 1 last bookstore venture and I'll have read the whole thing and know, for sure whether I want to own it. Today I went into the bookstore and ... It wasn't there. The book was no where to be found. There were a dozen or more copies on the Mother's day display the last time I was in and this time everything was cars and sports and stupid men books (ok, I know that's not fair, just not what I was looking for). I *scoured* the craft book section. I went book by book through the knitting and crocheting books. Then I branched out into the quilting and beading books. Not a single copy to be found. There was Stitch n' Bitch and Happy Hooker and even the One Skein book that my coworker brought in to show and tell. But not a single copy of *my* current read! I know I shouldn't be surprised. It is after all a bookstore's main purpose to sell books, not be a library, but it was still highly unnerving. So... I ended up going to Borders, reading it to the last few pages, and then buying it, because yes, it was that good.

I like the Yarn Harlot. I like her self-deprecating humor. I like that she admits to being disorganized and imperfect. I like that she doesn't take herself or her knitting that seriously. She gives loose general instructions and guidelines on how to accomplish the basic commonly knitted items. This above all else is why I bought the book. I refuse to follow a pattern exactly. I think it might come from living in Massachusetts where traffic laws are guidelines and speedlimits are suggestions. I hardly ever follow a cooking recipe exactly, because whoever wrote it up was either from the Midwest and likes their food bland or without enough vegetables, or they are a spice-lover who tamed it down for a "wider audience". So I guess that's it. Whoever wrote that knitting pattern isn't me. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else, but I know I don't knit exactly like anyone else. And if I don't like the way it's coming out why continue on to have a finished product that I don't like when I can do something about it in the meanwhile? Why be complacent when I can be adventurous and customized. I guess that's maybe the real heart of the matter. I don't like the idea of being exactly like anyone else. I want to be unique, and if that means my socks don't match perfectly, so be it!