#Sidenote but I do wanna give myself credit where it's due; I actually did my raglan increases really good this time

[moongothic]

So, back in early 2023, our local yarn shop sadly closed down, and I got some Really Nice Yarn at a really, really good discount. Like I would not have bought this Malabrigo yarn ever had it not been on discount. And, because it's nice yarn, I had been saving it up for a good, long while. Mainly because I had other projects I wanted to finish first, but also because this Really Nice Yarn, and I wanted to make something really nice with it, with care.

I wanted to make something wearable with this yarn, but at the time I had little knitting experience. I do love making things in crochet, but I don't like crochet on wearables, and crochet eats up so much more yarn I did not want to risk running out of yarn. So yeah, I left the yarn to wait, and over 2023 I got better at knitting by just knitting a lot of small shit, and this year I made my first knitted sweater. With all that I did finally get enough confidence to finally get working with this yarn. And over the last year I had had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to make with it specifically.

I wanted to try to make a colorwork sweater.

Now specifically, I wanted to practise doing colorwork. A traditional colorwork sweater (with colorwork all across the yoke and maybe even the whole thing) seemed like too much for me to figure out, like that's a lot of floats to manage and tension to figure out. For a long while I was thinking a peppermint themed sweater with vertical stripes could be super cute, and relatively simple (at least in design) but also the floats of that intimidated me a lot. But also, I'm working with red and white here, what else can I do with this color palette? I did also think about knitting like a ribcage pattern on the sweater, but that also intimidated me a little bit.

Then I had another idea; what if I do a sweater with an intarsia section? That would allow me to practise doing colorwork, managing floats and figuring out my tension, but at a smaller scale. I can just do a topdown raglan like my previous/first sweater, and amp up the difficulty just a little bit (instead of a lot) And... yeah, with this colorpalette in mind, I had one idea for what I could try to knit; a bleeding, anatomical heart.

So I bullshitted a chart together

(Blew it up to a bigger size when actually using it)

And I just. Got to knitting.

Honestly I don't even have much to say about the knitting process, it went smoothly and I had fun, although I was very worried about my tension the whole time, unsure if I was knitting it too tight or too loose, and praying blocking the sweater would help it in the end.

But yeah, once the knitting was done, it was time to block.

Took one photo of my floats before blocking

And then. Disaster struck.

Now, in hindsight, thinking about it deeply, I think the seller at the yarn store might've actually warned me about this, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. But the red dye started bleeding from the yarn while blocking. I had a fucking meltdown y'all. Like I started seeing the water in the lil tub I was blocking the sweater in turning a little pink and I was getting worried, I pour the water out and rinse the sweater with running water hoping the red dye hadn't stuck to the white yarn, but it had. In utter desperation I flung this thing straight into the washing machine (either a wool cycle or a quick wash), hoping a quick rinse would help the red dye come off. I did so much shit, in complete panic, just desperate to make my sweater not pink.

But it was too late, I had been too slow to react.

The white yarn, previously a stark white, now has a pink undertone to it.

Okay it's not so bad, you can definitely see it better in person than in the photo, but regardless, after all the time I spent working on this damn thing the dye bleeding really did just wreck me, to the point I left the sweater to sit by itself for a month, still kind of unfinished, because I could not bring myself to even look at it.

But yeah, eventually, I got over the yarn staining, and returned to the sweater. I had some loose ends that needed to be weaved in still, yes, but also.

My colorwork was kind of shit and I had to do something about it.

I had done a decent job with the red floats, maybe a bit too tight in some places but not too bad. The white floats however, were far too fucking loose, and so there was massive gaping on the sides of the colorwork. And while I could kind of pull the white floats inwards, they would come loose again and the gaping holes would return.

A normal person would realize you just have to frog the whole sweater and redo it because there's no fixing shit tension like this. But, look. If there's something I've learned from doing comics, it's that while I could spend months trying to master this one thing, I could also, instead, just call it a day and move onto the next thing. Or, in this case, try to bandaid the issue and improve my tension with my next colorwork project (whenever that may happen).

So I did spend some time trying to find any suggestions on how one could try to "fix" this shit tension, but I couldn't really find anything. But after futzing around with the yarn and the floats, I wondered... If I somehow managed to hold down the white floats on the inside of the sweater, could I not artificially tighten the tension and fix the gaping?

So I grabbed a small crochet hook and...

You know when you drop a stitch when knitting and then rescue it with a crochet hook, looping each round of yarn with the next? Yeah, I just. Did that. Creating a little chain stitch. And just to hold THAT down and keeping from unravelling, I grabbed a little bit of sewing thread and knotted it at the top of the stitch so I can't fall out.

Yeah, this is not an Elegant Solution, this is an Improper Knitting Technique and Most Shameful, I should just frog the project and redo it and Git Good.

But like.

It kinda really did work, man.

Now I did pull the chain a little too tight in a few spots so I created new issues (in the form of buckling) lmao, but like. There's no more gaping holes. Like, I dunno what to tell you man, it kinda worked, the main issue I was having and most unhappy about is gone. Like I wanna take that W, man.

Anyway, there were other issues with the sweater, a quick rundown:

I made the sleeves too long, the yarn switch was meant to happen at the same height as the torso but the sleeves really stretched the fuck out when blocking and so not only is the color change in the wrong spot but also they're just too long. Whoops. (Thankfully I can just fold the sleeves over, it's just the ribbing won't be the same lenght as the bottom of the sweater)

I dunno what I did but the sleeves are a bit too big and so the fabric of the sweater just kinda creates these weird folds in the upper arm that annoy the shit out of me (I'm just confused because I did it the same as my previous sweater but I didn't have this problem with it??)

The yarn is thin, and so the sweater is shockingly seethru. Like, you can see the black Roadhog Overwatch t-shirt I'm wearing underneath it, which is mildly annoying. Just, gotta wear white and/or plain t-shirts underneath this thing, I guess.

When bullshitting my chart together I may have stretched the heart out a little too much so it looks maybe a smidge too elongated, and generally speaking the heart looks a bit off (but that's more of a "I don't know how to create an image that reads nicely when knit" problem) (Also I could fix some of it by duplicate stitching on top, if I felt like it)

In hindsight, maybe using this superwash wool wasn't a great pick for colorwork since the yarn won't stick to itself (which you would want with colorwork, right?)

So the human heart lies about in the center of your chest if a smidge to the left, and so I tried to do that "just a smidge to the left of the center" positioning. And like, while the pattern did go exactly where I wanted it to go, I did the math right, maybe in hindsight I should've moved it just a little bit more to the left because right now it looks like... unintentionally off-center??? Like had I moved it 5 more stitches to the left it'd probably look more intentional (despite the position being intentional to begin with)

Aside from that though, it turned out Relatively Decent. Not as good as my previous sweater, but it's fine, I'll wear it, and I learned a lot during this process. And that's what really matters, doesn't it.

[wannaliveattheholidayinn]

Ok, But Seriously, I Have Thoughts

I have... really mixed feelings about this episode, so I'm gonna talk about those feelings. And if my feelings about zep as a show and this season come out during that... so be it. (Seriously, this got long. I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry). Also spoilers for the new ep below the cut, but y'all should've been able to guess that

- I... Zimon seriously deserves just so much better. We saw them as a couple together for three episodes, and they honestly weren't explored enough. Zimon... and this is a very personal opinion, but they really do strike me as a couple who never fully leave the honeymoon phase... like ever. Like, of course, they'll fight and disagree on a lot of things, but they also can have adult children, and just kind of act like newlyweds even if they've been married for over twenty years. And again, I know that's a very personal opinion, but I mean... we all knew c/arkeman was gonna be endgame, and it just feels like zimon was never given an actual chance.

- However, I do very much appreciate that their breakup was not messy, there's still clearly a ton of respect for the other on both of their sides, and that Simon is okay.

- "We didn't belong together." No, you fucking did.

- I am not going to stop writing Zimon fanfic either. In fact, this might spur me to write more and work harder on writing Zimon fanfic.

- Rose. Fucking. Deserves. Better. I'm not even gonna elaborate on this one. We all know it.

- Despite the fact that I fucking hate c/arkeman and that it was very, very rushed... I'm giving acting and singing props to Jane. I Melt With You is a song that's extremely personal to me. It helped get me through a point in my life where... I was constantly feeling at war with others, myself, and even felt unsafe in my own home (something I still feel today, no matter how irrational I know it is). I just generally feel a strong connection to every version of the song bc of that, whether it's the original or the Bowling for Soup cover (that was in Sky High!), and... Jane just has a way of making me feel safe when she sings. So, I really, really loved her cover.

- Um... yeah, I'm gonna be real, I don't like the idea of Max having powers. I don't know, I just think it kinda changes the whole original concept of the show, and I'm not a big fan of that...

- Simon! Simon working on changing SPRQ Point!!!!

- I do not really like how they handled Simon's racial bias/systemic racism in coding storyline *after* episode six (aka it only really being mentioned in passing, not being further explored, etc.), but,,, credits due where it's due I guess? I like how they handled him going to Danny Michael Davis, and how DMD listened.

- Sidenote, I kinda find it weird we as a fandom don't refer to him as Danny... it's Danny Michael Davis, DMD, or fucking Willy Wonka jokes. Makes sense I guess.

- Um... the writing was just... so lazy. Yeah. It's... really sad, I think that the show would've benefitted from even one less ep. But on the other hand... lazy writing is lazy writing.

- I think it would've been better - honestly - if Zoey's feelings of loss hadn't been connected to Max in a romantic way, but in a platonic/familial way. We didn't see a ton of their friendship, and yeah,, I hate Max, but there are a few moments there where you can see a legitimate friendship that's really sweet. I also think if they had maybe explored Zoey's fear of losing Simon as well as Max and centered the finale more on Zoey telling Simon about her power, it would've just been a lot better.

- But... honestly, after I just aired out all my issues with this episode (and the season too kinda),,, I honestly liked it. I hate that Zimon broke up and I just generally hate cl*arkeman but... this ep had some really great moments. Zoey and Mitch were beautiful to see again. Mctobin, Davidemily, and Mo x Perry were all absolutely my favorite parts of the episode. Hell, I'll even admit I... well I don't wanna say laughed considering I was so close to crying, but I let out a weird, breathy noise resembling a laugh when Zoey just blurted out she and Simon had broken up.

I don't want to say it was a bad episode, because I did honestly, enjoy ~parts~ of it... but... it wasn't even that cl/arkeman happened, I knew it would, but how it did... it just honestly (my g.od i need to stop writing that word) seemed like they were trying to kill off or like... fucking quash *any* hope Zimon shippers may have had,,, and the writing was just so fucking lazy, I just...

I started the show after dance one night because my teacher showed us the Help! number bc he was an extra in it. And I had already been intrigued by the few ads I had seen for it. So, my mom and I watched it, and we loved it. So we kept watching. And it was good! It was really good! Sure it could be cheesy, but... that didn't matter. I latched on...

I don't know if, ZEP is gonna get renewed, and if it is, I don't know if I'll watch it if/when it does. I latch on to shows really fucking hard when I do latch on. It's why I keep rewatching The Good Place and why I'll never forgive Freeform/Disney/Marvel for canceling Cloak and Dagger. The way I latch onto things is probably a bit unhealthy. And the fact of the matter is, despite everything, my overwhelming feelings about ZEP are positive. And I latched on. I'd honestly do it all over again.

I have a lot of feelings about this fandom and this show, both positive and negative. Still, I love it. Unconditionally. Ultimately, I don't care if Zoey ends up with Max or Simon (though, seriously, she and Simon are made for each other). It's a good fucking show, ships shouldn't be everything that matters.

I began lurking in this fandom when I was fifteen. I began posting fanfic for it when I was sixteen. I'm almost seventeen now. I was planning to get Tumblr when I was seventeen. I also knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I hadn't made my presence here known if it didn't get renewed.

I want to thank @simon-haynes because, uh, holy fuck, I adore you. Running a blog for fandom is something I couldn't even fathom, especially when a large portion of the fandom doesn't like your ship. I legitimately can't believe you followed me.

Thank you to @jennakang. You are, honestly, one of the best writers I've ever read from. You were so incredibly supportive of my writing on ao3, despite the fact you didn't know who I was, and that really meant the world to me. Thank you so much for your contributions to the fandom. Also, uh, fun fact, I was the anon who, after you expressed the want to write the quarantined Zimon fic, sent in that ask that was like "please do!" and also "hope I'm not being pushy about this". I don't know if you remember that at all, but your response meant the world to me.

And uh, lastly @myheartissetinmotion. Um, wow. I know we barely know each other, but I can honestly say, you have been my anchor for this whole show. I love both your Tori content on TikTok as well as just zep content you do on there, and how you wrote her into zep on ao3. I personally like to think of you as the pioneer of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist Tok. You were pretty unbiased when it came to ships on there, and that made me feel safe in a place where there were virtually no zimon shippers. Your content was funny, and I always found myself laughing or screaming "accurate" at it. I know, I'm the nuisance who every few months DMs you about something zep related, but I hope you know, you made me feel both seen and somewhat appreciated in this fandom. I cannot thank you enough, Isabella 💗

I know Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist may not be ending. But this still oddly feels like the end of an era. I'm not leaving the fandom, I plan to keep posting fanfic for it and everything. I just want everyone who may be reading this to know I love this fandom and I would not take any moment here back.

Also, this is me formally asking for a link to a Discord group chat since I know it exists but I'm too scared to actually ask any of you for it directly.