A Frayed Knot

When I accepted my current job, I had some reservations about the way it might affect my favorite hobbies. I feared that if I was around fiber crafts all day, I would no long feel the urge to knit and crochet. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Not only have I not stopped, I’m probably in one of the most prolific periods of my life (this weekend alone I knitted a pair of baby booties, most of a sweater, and part of a baby blanket [the baby items are gifts -- don't get excited, Mom]).

However, I have not really been designing at all (the aforementioned baby blanket is one exception to this rule, which I will elaborate on below). And mostly the things I’ve been knitting have been simple — lots of stockinette, lots of simple shapes, very little lace or cables. Last week, I came across the Evenstar shawl. And it took my breath away, in an “I must knit this NOW” kind of way. A couple of days after seeing that, I sketched not one but two original sweaters. One of them is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but the other is a nice, workable design that I’m going to get to work on soon — I even know what yarn I want to use for it.

About that baby blanket…while it is an original design, it’s design through necessity rather than design through inspiration. Which is not to say that makes it bad design, just that I was still not feeling any inspiration when I began it. I had found a gorgeous ball of yarn on the clearance rack at Creative Knitworks (my LYS), but of course she only had one, because that’s the way it works. However, I was able to score two balls of one coordinating color and three balls of another. I, of course, have no baby blanket pattern that would accommodate this bizarre combination, so the yarn hung out for a bit while I thought on it. Then, as luck would have it, someone in one of my Ravelry groups posted about having completed this really awesome sweater where you roll dice to determine what your cables are going to do.

Ah ha! I thought, if it’ll work for cables, it’ll work for stripes. But how do I make sure I’m not doing a high number of the yarn I have only one ball of, and low numbers for the yarns I have more of? Gaming dice, that’s how! So for the color I have a single ball of, I roll a d4. For the color I have 2 balls of, I roll a d8, and for the main color, I roll a d10. I might still have thin stripes of the latter 2, but it should all work out in the end.

I’m also inspired to finish knitting a design that I started all the way back in 2007, which I think will be really cute when it’s done…and shouldn’t take too long to finish, either. I’m back, baby!

Really, I haven’t posted since Becky’s birthday? Really? Huh.

Nothing tremendously exciting has happened since then, but lots of little things have. I have pictures of some, but not of others. So let’s see…

There was PAXEast, which was actually before Becky’s birthday, but which I didn’t blog about. And really, it was tremendously exciting. I went up and hung out with the O’Kulpells and the Rothausers while Kit held down the fort back home. I got to meet Wil Wheaton, and actually had something genuine to say to him besides, “here, sign my book.” I got to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm in concert for the first time, and I got to participate in this, which was absolutely amazing:

(watch especially closely at around the 1:46 mark)

Then Sunday morning, Kevin, because he is awesome, volunteered to run an additional section of the WotC “Learn 4E” seminar/mod, and that was a ton of fun.

———————————————————-

Speaking of Jonathon Coulton and Paul and Storm, Kit and I went to see them the following weekend in NYC. We got there too late to be seated at a table, but not too late to grab space by the bar. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, that’s what. We were served just the right amount, and were quite buzzed but never sloppy drunk. On the way out, I was able to cut the ridiculously long line and way-lay P&S, like so:

Me: Hey! Great show! Is the line just to buy stuff, or is it also to talk to you guys?

P&S [exchanging glances]: Uh…

Guy in the front of the line [looking over]: She does have breasts…

Me: I know, I have a great rack, right!?!? [insert innanity to P&S here about two great shows in a row or something -- I don't even remember]

And then we left. [Important sidenote: I was wearing my Portal t-shirt, which features a large picture of cake on the front and says "the cake is a lie" on the back.] As we walked out onto the street, I received perhaps the greatest compliment ever (which will only make sense if you’re familiar with Portal, so apologies to those of you who won’t get this) as we walked past a group of gentlemen who had been at the concert: “Wow. Your cake is not a lie!”

But the delightful oddness of the evening wasn’t done yet…when we got back to Hoboken, I had decided that I Needed Cake. The first bodega we hit had cake mix, but no actual cake. Not even like a Twinkie. So weird. The next place just had slices of various pound and coffee cakes from a local bakery. I finally settled on a slice of Cream Cheese Poundcake, and as the gentleman behind the counter took our money and handed the cake to me, he said, very gravely, “This is a good choice. You will enjoy this cake very much.”

I did, too, even though it was much lemony-er than I expected.

——————————————————————

Okay, that’s about all the blogging I have in me right now…I am (obviously) still working on getting the site back to the way it should be, but I’m really going to try to get back to regular blogging. I have lots of knitting and kids stuff to blog about, plus some more geek stuff, and baking stuff…

Somehow, my daughter Becky has become a huge Star Wars fan. I know, right, how could this possibly have happened? She has recently:

- cried when watching Darth Vader’s body burned on a pyre at the end of Jedi
- told me that I shouldn’t be watching Fanboys because “We don’t watch other Star Wars movies! Only Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi!“
- declared that she wants Darth Vader to be her father instead of Luke’s because “Luke is a bad boy and doesn’t deserve him.”
- announced that she wants to be Han Solo when she grows up
- requested demanded a Millennium Falcon cake for her birthday, with Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Princess Leia, but not Luke, “because Luke is too whiny.” Because I’m a sucker for the Millennium Falcon, and a challenge, and my little girl, I said, “Sure! How hard can it be?” And then I found out:

The party was Saturday at 4pm. Giant props to Kit for handling every detail of the party, from scheduling the space (Build-A-Bear) to taking care of the invites to greeting the parents and filming the party, leaving me free to concentrate fully on the cake.

I had originally thought to do gum-paste figures, but the tiny little sane part of my brain said, “Hey, dummy — they make perfectly good action figures, and then the kid will have a bonus birthday present, too!” So I went out and got everything but a Leia (because the Toys’R'Us I was at didn’t have one, but she was not terribly missed, so it’s okay). I had already ordered the most awesomest birthday candle EVAH for her: Darth Vader holding as his lightsaber a red candle.

After some hemming and hawing, Becky settled on both chocolate and vanilla for the actual cake. I do not particularly enjoy actually baking cakes, which means I don’t do it often enough to get really good at it, which means I bought mixes. My mom’s in town (hi, Mom!) and she helped me get the mixes all, well, mixed and into the oven. One large (13×9) chocolate rectangle for the bottom, and two 9″ vanilla circles for the top + accessories. They came out fine, and we were ready to carve them Friday.

Now that I think about it, perhaps “ready” isn’t the right word…I wasn’t quite prepared for the reality of carving cake, and got pretty frustrated, especially with the cockpit. I finally ended up with something I thought would work, but it was clearly unstable and would need to be attached just prior to putting the fondant on, which I had planned for Saturday morning. Here’s what it looked like Friday night when I was done:

Bright and early Saturday, Kit took the kids for a walk, and I started putting it together and getting it ready for frosting. I had done the carving on a board, but wanted to transfer it to the actual presentation board before frosting. This necessitated planning the layout, so we opened up all the action figures and the candle, which promptly broke at the ankles. All attempts to repair it failed, and actually broke the base even further. Lacking the time to panic, I decided to just set it aside and deal with it later.

We decided where the ship should be on the board, and I commenced frosting it (in case you’ve never worked with fondant before, you put a thin layer of regular frosting on to “glue” the fondant). This meant it was time to attach the cockpit, which promptly disintegrated. You can see in the picture above that I had originally carved the cockpit piece out of the vanilla cake, and as it turns out, the chocolate cake holds together a little better. So I quickly re-carved it out of a piece of chocolate cake that was in my big bowl o’ cake scraps, and skewered it on. And then the bottom fell off, and I panicked.

While part of my brain was panicking, the other part was applying frosting and considering the situation. I finally came to the conclusion that the solution was to cheat. So I went upstairs and got some styrofoam and carved my third cockpit. This one didn’t fall apart, and I moved on to the actually fondanting.

There were a couple of tricky things about applying the fondant, mostly because the shape has a lot of nooks and crannys and this is only the second time I’ve ever used fondant, so I’m not particularly well-versed in manupulating it. But I got it on the cake with no real problems, and despite some cutting errors and a little bunching on the back, I thought it looked pretty good. It was, at the very least, the right shape:

Oh! Before I did the big fondanting bit, I decided it would be a good idea to practice a little and remind myself of how the fondant moves and acts. So I built the sensor dish, which ended up being my favorite part of the cake:

Now that I had the fondant on, it was time for the decorating. I cut out the dots that are a recognizable part of the top of the MF, with the plan of spray painting them with the black frosting I’d purchased for the dual purposes of painting said dots and also dirtying up the finished ship. It turns out that the “black” spray frosting is really more of a “light silver gray,” even after several applications. So it was off to Michael’s for emergency black frosting coloring…and where I found food-safe markers, including black. Win!

Back home, I set Mom to the task of coloring the dots, while I began applying the details with white piping. Then I changed my mind and decided most of the lines should be scored, with a very few details sticking up. So I scraped it down and started over, and let the sane part of my brain convince the panicky part that we had plenty of time as long as we didn’t get too carried away. Applying the blue of the engines to the back was considerably less stressful than I had thought it was going to be, and it improved the lines of the back of the cake quite a lot.

Now, Becky had specifically requested that we included the red/rust detailing — it’s on the real thing, and it’s on one of her toys but not the other — so I used the red marker to color that in, and then went back and piped in a few details here and there, using her two MF toys for reference (incidentally, I highly recommend having a 3D model on hand when doing something like this — much better than trying to find pictures with the right angles on the internet). I redid the cockpit a couple of times, and never was quite happy with it, but finally I had to declare it finished. I took it outside and gave it a quick spritzing with the “black” spray frosting, just to scunge it up a little.

I have to say, I was pretty pleased with the end result. It’s not the best looking Millennium Falcon cake I’ve ever seen, but I think I did a pretty good job for someone who doesn’t really decorate cakes:

I was a little annoyed about only having the foil for it to sit on, but then I had an i
dea while I was in the shower (yes, I finished in enough time that I was able to shower and even iron my skirt before we had to leave for the party!)…on the way I grabbed a couple bags of brown sugar and when we set the cake up, I think it looked a lot like it was parked on the sands at Mos Eisley:

And look! I solved the Darth Vader problem and the gun turret problem (at some point I realized that I should have guns up there and I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do) in one fell swoop! Yay me!

Next time, I’m going to make someone else cut the cake — it was a lot harder than I expected it to be. It took about 5 minutes to go from the above to this, and I really felt like I needed a good lie-down afterwards:

(Incidentally, when you stack cakes on top of one another, don’t forget to put a layer of frosting in there — you’ll thank yourself when it’s time to serve.)

I have to give tremendous thanks to Kit and Grandma Tedi for all their help and encouragement and keeping the kids out of the kitchen/dining room/my way. And especially thank you to Becky, who told me at every stage how awesome her Millennium Falcon cake looked, and made me remember why I was doing this even when I was so frustrated with the cockpit that I was seriously considering sending Kit to the A&P for a plain old sheet cake. Love you all!

Conversation with Becky this morning:

Becky: Mommy, I don’t like these guys’ faces. They’re ugly.
Me: Becky, that’s really not very nice.
Becky: But Mommy, just look at them!

——————————————–

We lost power last night due to the near-hurricane that passed through. While it was annoying (we had just started watching L4yer Cake in Blu-Ray with not-quite surround sound*!), it’s not frigidly cold or swelteringly hot, so we weren’t overly concerned. It did give us some insight into how much we depend on electricity, though.

For instance, although our stove is gas, it’s controlled by electricity. We get our filtered water out of the fridge…need electricity for that. TV, obviously, though the kids were really pretty good about TV being “broken.” I can get away with throwing my hair up into a ponytail, but my bangs really require blowdrying. I was really pleased that I had charged my laptop yesterday before the power went out…until I realized that without electricity, I had no internet. I wanted a cup of tea this morning. Guess what? Electric kettle. I went to the yarn store today to pick up my new ballwinder (sidenote: do you think it indicates that I use too much yarn if I’m on my third ball winder in 10 years?), and was really excited to get home and wind some yarn. When I opened the door, Kit just burst out laughing. See, I went crazy and splurged on my new electric ballwinder. Sigh.

But power is back now — when it came back a little while ago, a bunch of the lights came on and Zack stood up, looked around, and shouted, “I DID IT!!!” — and the house is warm again, and I have the internet, and after the kids go to bed we’re going to finish watching our movie. In the meantime, I’m going to finish up my new dice bag, which I started knitting by candlelight last night (lesson learned: do not try to knit dark blue yarn by candlelight. You will get a headache of monster proportions.) and maybe wind some yarn, and check out some stitch pattern books. Because I bought some fab bulky wool at my LYS (Creative Knitworks in Westwood — check it out, Sharon’s awesome) to make a big cardigan out of…and there was only enough if I bought both the lime green and the fuschia. So it’s going to be my crazy striped sweater. Because I don’t have anything else I should be working on, like baby gifts for my three(!!!) friends that just had babies, or my wrap for Fortunetide, which is in just about a month and I’m not even halfway done. I really am glad we have lights again. All this knitting is much easier when I can see!

*I don’t have the rear speakers set up yet, but it’s still a striking difference in sound quality

I had a few more setbacks yesterday, like discovering that I had cast on the proper number of stitches for the sleeve as written, instead of for the sleeve as I was modifying it (note: your wrist is generally a much smaller circumference than your upper arm). Then after I fixed that little problem and made the sleeves properly, I attached the sleeves and worked several rows before I noticed that, in fact, I had attached only one sleeve. More ripping. I did make it about halfway through the owl cable last night, and was able to bind off just as the big hockey game started this afternoon (and boy am I glad I was done with the knitting before the game — I never would have been able to maintain even tension while watching that!).

I sewed on the very last eye just before the closing ceremonies began on NBC. As soon as the gold medal badge is available, you’ll see it over in the right hand column there.

Despite the fact that I personally had a lot of difficulty with this pattern, I want to make it clear that the fault was all mine — the pattern itself is very clearly written and easy to follow. I did make a few modifications, to wit:

- I did not work any of the short rows. I’m pretty curvy, and I knew I was knitting with a good deal of negative ease, so I basically decided to let my boobs do the work of the short rows.
- I (obviously) shortened the sleeves. Once I got over my attack of the stupids, all I did was cast on the number of stitches you should have after you’ve done all the increases for the long sleeves.
- I did not bind off the stitches called for at the armhole. I’m not sure what that’s all about, but I’ve made enough sweaters with similar construction that didn’t call for binding off stitches there that I felt safe skipping it. It turned out fine. YMMV.
- I added an extra row of plain knitting when I joined the sleeves to the body. The pattern as written seems to indicate that you should begin working the first row of the owl cable as you’re joining, and frankly, that just seemed like asking for trouble, all things considered.
- I did not bind off with a larger needle, but instead used the elastic bind-off I always use on sock cuffs.

I am both very, very pleased with the end product, and very pleased with myself for getting it done. In addition to this project, I finished up Becky’s sweater (finally!), did a pretty decent job of decluttering and wiping down surfaces in preparation for dinner guests, went to a rock concert, and pretty much maintained a normal life.

I’m taking a little break from crazy-making knitting and just working on a pretty Clapotis to wear at Fortunetide (the Otherworld ball) this year. And Becky’s been demanding a scarf, so it seems like I’ll probably cast that on sometime this week. Oh, and I need to make a dice bag before PAX East. After that, maybe, I’ll get back to more complicated projects like the Simply Knitted Bodice and the Fishtail Lace Tunic. Or the Favorite Cardigan. Or maybe that cabled sweater from the old VK I’ve been wanting to reknit…

Two days left of the Olympics, and I’ve still got sleeves and yoke left to go on the sweater. I was in pretty good shape up until last Friday, when I had knitted the body up past the increases and decided to try it on to see how far I still needed to go to make it to the armholes. So it turns out that if you’re knitting a very fitted sweater, and you’ve lost 40lbs or so since you last took your measurements, “guesstimating” is not the way to choose your size. I was looking to have about 2-3″ of negative ease, and ended up with about 4″ of positive ease. Rip.

Yesterday I finally got back to the point where I was ready to try on the body again: success! It’s exactly as fitted as I want it to be. So I took a little break to pick out the eyes for the owls. There will be 19 owls total, which means I need 38 buttons. I had considered just going out and purchasing some, but really, with the number of buttons I have in the basement, that just seems silly. I knew there was no way I had 38 of the same button, so I decided that each owl would have a different set of vintage button eyes. To keep this from looking like a crazy circus freak sweater, I wanted them all to be fairly close in hue and value, so I chose blue, green, and grey.

I found lots of buttons that would be perfect…if owls only had one eye. Turns out the problem with having lots of unique buttons is that many of them are unique in the literal sense of the word. I was finally able to find 19 pairs of the right size and in complementary shades, but it took much longer than I had planned, cutting into precious knitting time.

I was able to work up to the armholes last night before I was finally too tired to knit anymore, and had planned on casting on the sleeves this morning (remember, I’m doing short sleeves so they really shouldn’t take all that long [insert mildly hysterical laughter here]), but then discovered that I had neglected to wind any more skeins into balls (there is actually a reason I did this: my ball winder keeps trying to eat my yarn, so I have ordered a new one. Sadly, it’s not here yet.). So I went to do that, only to discover that the first two skeins I pulled out were so tangled I had to wind them manually. Grrrr.

However, I am finally ready to sit down and knit. If I can get the sleeves done before lunch (see above re: hysterical laughter), I’ll be in pretty good shape, I think. Cross your fingers for me!

A note to family and the two of you who still read this for the very occasional knitting content: there will be none of that today. This is totally about me being a geek. No knitting or family content will be provided. Also, I feel like it’s going to be pretty long. And I’m not going to be explaining the acronyms unless you ask really nicely in the comments. Proceed at your own risk.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a friend** wherein I mentioned that I was tired of companies trying to get me to change technologies. I’m a videophile, but really, the switch from video to DVD was enough for me. I’m perfectly happy with DVDs. Really, I am. And we own a bunch of them, so I was really not looking to switch to Blu-Ray and having to buy all the same movies yet again. Then my friend told me that you can still play your DVDs on a Blu-Ray player. And he extolled the virtues of their prettiness. And also pointed out that the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player that comes with a gaming system added on for not much more than the cost of a decent stand-alone player. These are all pretty convincing arguments, and the trifecta*** convinced me to ask for a PS3 for my birthday.

So Kit, because he has a hard time saying “no” to me (I think it’s the big brown eyes), ordered me one. There’s a saga involving P.C. Richard’s, UPS, and a signature, but it eventually (through yet more effort on Kit’s part) came safely to me on Monday. I hooked it about fifteen minutes after it got here (yes, I know it’s not my birthday yet. Shut up.) and it only took me that long because I had to take it out of its set of three nested boxes. No, I am not kidding.

By the time I got it all hooked up it was pretty late, and we didn’t have any Blu-Rays yet, and we only had the one game that came with the bundle (he got me the 160GB large box with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune) and I’m a little too spazzy with it to be comfortable playing it with an audience. As much as I enjoy video games, I lack the thumb skillz to actually play a lot of them. So I played it for about 5 minutes, just to check it out a little, and I put it away.

You see, Kit goes to the local gaming store for some D&D action on Thursdays, so I knew I’d have a chance to play around with my fancy new toy to my heart’s content tonight. I even popped into GameStop and picked up a couple of additional games (Oblivion and Ironman, for those keeping score at home). I have been excited about playing these games all week.

So while the kids were watching their pre-bed TV (live action Tick on Netflix Instant, which is considerably less painful than many of their other choices, but there are only 9 of them so I pretty much have them memorized at this point), I picked up a book that arrived the other day, because I’ve been trying to get back into reading more and during the 35th viewing of an episode of any show seems like a good time to make some progress along those lines. The book I grabbed happened to be Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton.

I do not remember the last time I picked up a book and read it cover-to-cover in one sitting, though it was almost certainly before Becky was born. (Wait, when did the last Harry Potter come out? That was probably it, though that was mostly so Kit could get to it fairly quickly.) Despite my desire to totally geek out on my PS3 tonight, I knew as soon as I’d read the first chapter that I was going to spend tonight reading this book. And I did. And it was totally, totally worth it.

A little background on how I came to have this book at all: I’m not really a Star Trek person, though I’ve been exposed to enough of it that I can keep up with basic discussions about it, and I did watch STNG for a season or two, so I knew who Wil Wheaton was****, but never really cared one way or the other about Wesley Crusher. So when people I respect kept tweeting and/or linking to his blog posts, I started following him just because I find his writing entertaining. And also, he seems like a pretty cool guy. And a total geek. So I figured, what the hell?

I both belly-laughed and had tears well up at several points while I was reading. I felt nostalgic, and like I was hanging out with some cool guy, and like geekiness was cool (to be fair, I mostly think geekiness is cool anyhow, but I’m aware that lots of people don’t). At some points I just sat back and enjoyed his stories, and at a couple of points, I had some personal epiphanies. Pretty fucking good for <300 pages. I chose wisely when I chose analog over digital tonight.

* This was an actual typo, but it fit with the theme and gave me a giggle when I noticed it, so I left it.

**This conversation actually happened at least three times with at least three separate people.

***”Perfecta” is in the Firefox dictionary but “trifecta” isn’t? WTF?

****Yes, I also knew him from Stand By Me, among other things he did when he was younger.

You may have noticed that’s it’s been a while since I blogged here. (Pause to wait for laughter to die down.) I’ve been busy with work and other stuff, and most of my blogging energies have been directed towards stuff over on the Lion Brand blog. But I actually kind of miss blogging over here, too, and I’ve been inspired lately so I’m going to try to start this back up again.

In a fit of violent optimism I signed up for the Knitting Olympics over at the Yarn Harlot’s site (relevant posts here and here). I am knitting the Owls sweater by Kate Davies with some 50/50 llama/merino wool that I picked up at Rhinebeck a few years ago. It’s a little lighter than the bulky yarn called for by the pattern, so I’m (now) knitting the largest size, which should actually end up being the same measurements (give or take) as the medium size. After a couple of (read: 4) false starts, I’m now up past the waist decreases, so I’m feeling pretty good about my progress. I will be doing a modified version with short sleeves, not for time consideration but because I think it’ll look better on me.

Unfortunately, I now need to set it aside for a bit and finish Becky’s sweater. Because really, the poor kid’s been waiting for this thing for almost a year. Bad mommy. I’ve only got the very top bit of one of the fronts left to knit and then I think there’s a little neck edging, and then just sewing it together. I really don’t want to put it off for another two weeks. So I’m hoping to get it finished tonight (pause again for laughter), at which point I will begin working on the Olympic sweater again in earnest, with only occasional breaks to work on the three (!!!!) baby projects I need to start/finish (note to friends who are planning more babies: could y’all please space your due dates out a little more? kthxbai).

Pasta recipe (adapted from Tyler Florence’s Pasta Dough for Ravioli)

Ingredients:

* 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
* 1/4 cup grated pecorino romano cheese
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 3 large eggs, plus 1 for egg wash
* 2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 Tablespoon water

Combine flour, cheese, and salt in mixer w/ dough hook. Add one egg at a time, mixing continually. Add oil. Continue mixing until dough forms a ball.

Dust work surface with flour. Turn dough out onto surface and work for 5-10 minutes, until dough is elastic. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic, and let rest for 30 minutes.

Divide dough in half and rewrap one half (to avoid drying). Form other half into a rectangle and run through pasta machine on widest setting 2-3 times. Run through middle setting 1-2 times, flouring as necessary. Lay rectangle out on floured work surface. Brush with egg wash (made by beating one egg w/ 1 Tbsp water).

For raviolis:
Dot with filling app. 1″ apart 1/4 – 1/2″ from one long edge of pasta. Fold strip over to enclose filling. Press air out around filling. Cut apart with sharp knife. Crimp edges with fork tine. Boil for 4 minutes in well salted water.

Clearly, the whole “November Make’n'Tell” thing is just not happening. Sorry about that. I’ll try again after the new year.

Since I’m all employed again and everything, I decided that for by big Christmas present this year I wanted an iPhone. Lots of my friends have them and seem to like them, and the whole internet-at-your-fingertips thing seems like a big win for me, and also, before I got all jobbed-up I was going to ask for a GPS and if you pay some extra, you can get your iPhone to do turn-by-turn GPS navigation, so it would take the place of that investment as well. I did my research and had decided which model and data plan I wanted…and then the Droid came along.

I did a bunch of research before I decided to jump ship and here’s what convinced me to go with the Droid:

- Google is responsible for the OS (Android, which has been available in previous iterations on a variety of not-quite-as-smart phones). Overall, I like Google’s products, so it seems like a good bet that I’ll like this one, too. It also means that there’s built-in integration with a lot of stuff I already use.
- Verizon is responsible for the network, and since one of the main complaints people have about the iPhone is AT&T’s craptacular network, this was a pretty big selling point. Early reviews made a big deal about how talking on the Droid is actually like talking on a, well, phone, while talking on the iPhone tends to be a bit like talking into a tin can.
- Turn-by-turn nav is included at no extra cost.
- Even though the iPhone has 10x as many apps available (at the time of the Droid’s release), lots of developers are busy porting…and really, most of what I want the phone for is already available.
- Finally, Apple has always rubbed me the wrong way with their extreme proprietariness and secrecy. If the Droid hadn’t come along, would I have overlooked that and gotten an iPhone? Yes. But it was nice not to have to.

So now I’ve had it for over a week, and I really like it. I’ve had a couple of small issues with it, and one rather large one when I bricked it less than an hour after I got it (fortunately, my Google-fu is mighty and I fixed it less than an hour after that). I’m finding that most of what I’ve read about the “drawbacks” or “negatives” don’t really apply to me, as they seem to be primarily differences between the iPhone and the Droid…and since I’ve never had an iPhone, I don’t have anything to relearn. I’m still getting it set up exactly how I want it, finding which things I actually use frequently enough to park on the front page and which can be relegated to the main menu area, but overall, I’m incredibly pleased with my choice.

Things other people seem to not like that don’t affect me:

- Some people apparently got a defective battery cover that falls of frequently. If you got one of these, take it back before the 30 days and exchange it.
- A lot of people seem to hate the camera. I’ve personally never seen a great cell phone camera (including the iPhone), so I wasn’t expecting much from this one. I think it’s an adequate replacement for a point’n’shoot, but it will never be even close to my beloved dSLR.
- The keyboards (both digital and physical) seem to throw a lot of people. The digital apparently differs quite a bit from the iPhone’s, which again, is not an issue for me since I’ve never used the iPhone. The physical one is drawing some criticism — people seem to feel that the keys are too small, or they don’t like the way they feel. To me, they feel like the old Thinkpad keyboards. I’m okay with the size of the keys, but can’t use them to text because if I try to do a smiley I inevitably hit “enter” which sends the text prematurely.

Things I don’t like:

- I had one of the phones that had the orientation bug that got “fixed.” I would really love for it to get un-fixed.
- I’d like to have actual password protection, not just a touch pattern
- Sometimes the touch screen is a little to sensitive for me, but I suspect if it was less sensitive, I’d complain about that, too.

I think that about covers it…I’d definitely recommend the Droid to a friend, especially one who has never had an iPhone or who is dissatisfied with their iPhone.