man, if you thought i was high beFORE, dude. dood! DOOD! (^___^) a 3x wide smiley does not BEGIN to cover it. i am so awesome. i am! this? this right here? this is more awesome than one word can cover. i am so awesome, i have crossed the line into ossum! i’m so awesome, the internet had a to invent a word to cover how awesome i am. … yeah, okay, that’s enough. seriously, i’m getting lightheaded. man. it is pretty awesome, though. –oh, sorry, “ossum.” i know i say this every year, but this year? THIS YEAR i was sure for a minute there that i wasn’t going to make it. it was like, 35k words, and i was like, man, i actually /care/ about this story, and nothing was making sense. i had loose threads ALL over the place, and then my choir’s extra long practice day was right in the middle of week two, and then my priest’s last day was right in the middle of week three, and then my upstairs neighbor came home and played his music all loud, and i flew into my customary righteous indignation mode, etc etc et-novelus-interruptus-cetera. but then i realized that if i didn’t win, it would be my first fail in SEVEN years of doing NaNo. that’s right, my record would be Win Win Win Win Win Win FAIL. and then i also realized that i really did care about this story. nevermind losing, if i didn’t write the story, it wouldn’t get written. my poor characters would be stuck there, forever mired in the craptastic middle i had left them with. it was time to outsmart myself, as my old workshop professor would say, and get my characters down from the tree. luckily, their descent took just under twenty thousand words. somehow or other, most of the things i thought were pointless loose ends got tied up as i discovered more and more things about my characters and their horrible horrible pasts. i had a lot of fun killing three or four people one night, and so i resolved to get my main characters shot. incidentally, my one main character seems un-shoot-at-able. my other main character, god bless him, gets shot at all the time, and actually got hit two or three times in that final scene, but the other chap just refuses to get shot at. he does shoot a dude right in the face though, and manages to violate his own code of ethics in protection of his best friend, so maybe he didn’t escape unscathed after all. (^_^) what i’m really proud of this month, though, is that the story’s finished. i have a bad habit of ending NaNo without a completed story. my NaNo from a couple years ago, that i’ve been editing off and on all year, has no ending scene. i know exactly what it looks like, which may be the problem, but i just haven’t sat down and written the damn thing yet. in this story, i knew the ending even before i knew the beginning, and i was worried that i would get bored and just not write it, when it came down to it. but i did write it, and i have to say, I FEEL DAMN GOOD ABOUT THAT. in fact, i feel so good, that i feel like writing something else. that’s right, i wrote 3300+ words in the past three hours and i’m like, MOAR WORDS PLZ~ we’ll see if that lasts. ~meredeth. victorious. 
/me takes a Don’t Stop Believin’ break .
FACT 174 – the “high” life
when the bloody title contains scare quotes, you know you’re in trouble. (^___^) I HAVE RISEN LIKE THE PHOENIX! FROM A 3000 WORD DEFICIT, I HAVE COME BACK! LIKE AN UNHAPPY VAMPIRE REAWAKENED FROM THE GRAVE! ONLY, HAPPY! oh my god i am so high right now. not the illegal kind, the adrenaline kind. the other day, there was a question on the Office of Letters/Light blog (at least, i think that’s where it was, my neural pathways are a bit scattered at the moment) about why you write. some people said things like, i have to write or i get angry about all the stupid shit in my life. some people said things like, i want to experience things that would/could never happen in real life. some people even said the thing that i always tell people, which is, the thrill of writing is the thrill of reading, you get to find out what happens next. but the deeper truth is this: i get high, from writing. a totally legal, occasionally money-making, often admired past-time, and when i’m done, i’m totally, gigglingly, singing-loud-ly, divuldging-far-too-much-information-when-asked-only-innocuous-questions (using-too-many-hyphens) HIGH. like drunk, but on words. (^_^) (incidentally, this kind of high is also what happens to me when i read something good, hence my tendancy to read at home, alone. but that’s a discussion for another post~) and then of course, there’s the killing people. no, seriously. half the reason i’m so high right now is because no less than four people have died horrible horrible deaths in the past 2000 words. i set them on fire, while revealing some scary plot stuff about my main character. he behaved poorly, and it scared his naive friend. now they’re stuck in a creepy Moria-esque (only much smaller, and without short bearded people) hidey-hole (isn’t that like the second time i’ve used that phrase this november? what is WRONG with me? … oh. yeah.), so main character is going to have to explain himself to naive friend, or at least deal with the fallout from his poor behavior, which is far more likely, since he has not thus far displayed a habit of explaining himself to people. but slowly, we are finding out why. and the whole setting-people-on-fire thing started when the bad guys killed one of main character’s friends, and shafting your main character is one of those pleasures of writing that keeps an author at the keyboard when it seems there is no other reason to be there. nothing gets me reinvested in a story more quickly than making something horrible happen to my beloved characters. also helping me at this point is that i have a vague idea of where i’m going with this. i’ve had an ending in mind all along, and it seems i might actually make it there (find something wooden, dude, because i need to knock), and so i’m eager to find out exactly how the new things that are happening right now (for example, i thought the chick who just died was going to be an escaped rebel leader, but it turns out she’s the escaped government employee i had originally planned the naive friend to be) are going to play into the super awesome bombing run i’ve got planned for the end. the fun of writing is the fun of reading: you get to find out what happens next. that, and the killing. (^_^)-b .
FACT 173 – on deficits
the word count kind, not the 99% kind. (^_^) as of this evening, i’m just over 3000 words behind, and that’s including the 2300+ words i flew through (in two and a half hours, yeah, “flew”) at tonight’s write-in (which was held at the Thurber Center downtown, and was awesome. things i am learning this NaNo: a typewriter makes a great impression at write-ins!). it sounds like a lot, but honestly, this isn’t the craziest deficit i’ve come back from. actually, i’ve only missed writing on a handful of days this month. i’ve made it a point not to even think about my story on fridays, and actually that’s helped the non-fridays be more productive. i’ve also found that, outside of miracle situations like write-ins, i really can’t write for more than an hour or so before i start making up excuses to get away. this produces Really Crappy Scenes and An Unhappy Writer. so i am now admitting my limitation. one hour, a break, and then another hour. please do not attempt them one right after the other, self, we’ll both regret it in the morning. thus, being all written out for tonight, i am Planning. i’m in the middle on the planner/pantser debate (“and i didn’t know which way to turn, which was unusual for me.”) but i’m definitely confirming for myself this year that total pantsing is not for me. when i don’t have something set down for me to write for a particular session, Bad Things happen. or, more usually, Nothing happens. i started with a general sort of overview, a few scenes i knew i wanted, and a general-to-middling idea of what i needed in between. i’ve been working out a couple of new scenes every day at work, and then coming home and writing those scenes at night. well, last thursday, i ran out of Scene. of course, friday is No Writing Day, so that wasn’t a problem, but then saturday came along, and instead of being Make Up For Friday Day it turned out to be Run All of the Errands Day. and since i didn’t have any scenes sketched out for me to fill in at an imagined saturday night writing session, the session poofed right out of existence. sadface. so i’m taking this evening to plan more studiously. as i mentioned previously, i really am not good at middles, so any plot planning i do is this: write beginning. write end. work towards middle. i also tend to be rather rigid about structure. for instance, my running out of Scene this past thursday took place right at the Point of No Return point, that is, the Event which causes my main character (who FINALLY has a name, THANK YOU JESUS) to really be boned to the point where he’d not going to be able to return to his normal life. this happened 13 scenes in. so, between the Point of No Return and The Final Scene, i figure there should be 13 more scenes. could i break this rule? i probably will. do i have enough to fill out 13 more scenes? i sure as hell don’t. but it is a helpful device. i’ve already written the first two of these 13 Mysterious Scenes at tonight’s write-in, and i’ve got five or six scenes that need to happen in order for the final bombing run to happen, just as Bombing Run Prep/physics satisfaction (i.e., you can’t blow up a building without explosives, so you’d better go collect those), so that right there is 7/13 scenes. i’m more than halfway there, and feeling better already. and it’s given me a sort of half idea for the subplot i’m (desperate for) going to need if i hope to make the second half of this book relevant to (even half as long as) the first. not that any of this crap will make it past the first draft. i’ve already half-filled a notebook with notes for revisions. ~meredeth. 3030 words behind, and Not Worried. (i am not worried. i am not worried. i am not…)
FACT 172 – a criminal mind
I BLEW UP A CAR! and then i killed a dude! and then i ran away through the forest, and i have JUST NOW emerged from a creepy underground escape tunnel! I WIN! for NaNo, i swear. (^_^) the problem now is that we’ve gotten to that scary part of all novels: the middle. i seem to have a serious problem filling up the middles of my stories. i am, frankly, awesome (okay, fine, merely “great”) at setting up initial problems. i can sure get my characters up a tree, and i’ve even managed to find a few rocks to toss at their heads. i’ve been alright with the rocks in the past, but i’ve been training, and this year, i seem to have figured out how to take aim right at their faces and hit em straight in the eyeball. (ouch!) but now it’s time for my characters to start showing some initiative, to try fighting back, to maybe, possibly, take a modicum of control over the outcome of their own destinies? wouldn’t that be nice? yeah? but they won’t do it. dude is hunted down by his own government, reunited with his best friend (thought missing, probably dead), all but thrown off a bridge by/with that friend and then they scurry down a underground hidey-tunnel (yes, “hidey-tunnel,” IT’S NOVEMBER OKAY) like little rats, AND HE JUST SITS THERE. at least his friend had the decency to clue me in as to what the hell the government’s been doing behind closed doors all this time. now if only GE would get up off his semi-albino /ass/ and try doing something, that would really help me out. after all, i’ve got just over 25 thousand more words to right, you know. or maybe he wants a few more rocks. .
FACT 171 – my fingers is mush
well, i’ve just written a little over 2200 words in almost two hours, and that’s pretty near to my story-writing peak, so i don’t know precisely why i thought now would be a great time for a blog entry, but here i am anyway. things i know now that i didn’t know yesterday: 1) my main character’s parents, mostly his mother, are real jerks. his dad is just a guy trying to do the right thing in a really difficult position, but his mom is a full-fledged douche. 2) an interrogator who’s genuinely friendly is actually way creepier than an interrogator who’s genuinely mean. 3) after you’ve seen Ghost in the Shell, any government tower is automatically the Ministry of Health Towers. i now also look forward to a writing session in which i sleep deprive my character, harrass him for something he didn’t do, accuse him of sassing a government official, probably threaten him with bodily harm if he doesn’t confess (to this thing he didn’t do) and then later on, there’ll be a writing session where i get to blow up a car and rescue the poor sleep-deprived chap from a fate worse than (or actually no, just) death. i can’t /wait/ to see the look on his face when he sees who’s gonna rescue him! that’s gonna be awesome! (^_^)-b ~meredeth. .
FACT 170 – mah brains is mush
but i’m ahead on my word count goal, and let’s be frank, in November, that’s all we care about. i could be a slimey gooey mass of slimey goo on the floor, but as long as i can still press the letters on my typewriter in some relatively coherent order, IT’S ALL GOOD. (^_^)-b and i’m gonna give my brother a little plug here, coz he’s doing a fancy Xwhatever in 30 days, too, namely 30 characters in 30 days. he’s here: http://www.30characters.com/author/cactuarjoe/. his day 1 was andrew jackson, and his day 2 was ada lovelace. he’s dressing up famous people as Final Fantasy/D&D/etc classes, and i think they’re super awesome, so obviously, you should go check it out. FTW, yo! also, about my typewriter, i wanted to share here what i did for an output containment device. as i said, i’m typing the whole 50k words up on my electric brother, and i can only write on thermal fax paper, which comes in 98 foot rolls. well, that’s not precisely conducive to a lack of clutter (trust me, i’ve got enough clutter around here, and it’s only the 2nd) and so i whipped a little something up from masking tape and bendy straws:
IT’S SO AWESOME I CAN’T TAKE IT! (^___^) okay, a smilie with that wide of a mouth is a sure sign that my mind is broken. also, i just realized that my typewriter’s name should be: The Electric Brother. i’m going to bed now. good thing i made tomorrow’s lunch while my mind was still not-broken, coz otherwise i’d end up eating something strange tomorrow, like, whatever strange thing i have in this house. (not much actually. i guess i only eat normal food… huh.) BROKEN. .
FACT 169 – mah birfdays~
one’s “birfdays” is apparently that time of year when one is allowed, even encouraged to toss grammar and spelling conventions out of one’s window and substitute whichever letters one prefers for whichever letters one does not… or something. (^_^) in any event, i am thirty years old, as of a couple of days ago, and so i thought i’d share some hideously embarrassing photos from the memorable event… for those of you not in the know, my mother has developed a habit of setting strange things on fire and placing them atop my father’s birthday cake. i believe it started with my father’s 50th, when mom thought that something humorous was appropriate, but didn’t want to go the standard (and thus un-funny) route of black hats/candles/et-over-the-hill-cetera. she placed 50 candles atop his cake, and carted the thing into the other room for my dad to test his lungs upon. fast forward several years, and she’s still lighting abnormally large amounts of candles on fire and placing them on birthday cakes. but i’m only 30, and we only had the number of candles on hand for father’s birthday, which of course were used at that joyous event: 
aaand the aftermath (some of the candles turned out to be of the type that don’t go out (oops!) so we had to dunk them in water to stop them relighting themselves): 
so you can well imagine that we expected something silly, despite the fact that my preferred birthday “cake” is in fact a lemon merangue pie: 
and so we got it: 
in case you don’t recognize them, those sticks of metal atop my pie are sparklers. like, fourth of july sparkler sparklers. which would have been well and good, except that once they were done sparkling (yeah, i wasn’t trying to blow those things out, thanks) we discovered they’d left behind a little extra iron for us: 
nutritious!(?) well, we ate it anyway, because pie is yummy, and especially lemon merangue, which i always ask for for my birthday. mom takes cake and dinner requests for our birthday, so i also had lasagne roll-ups this year, which i have been craving for some time. and they had plenty of spinich in them, which was especially delicious (i can’t believe i just said that. adult much?). as for presents, i spent friday hanging with the madre, saturday hanging with my youngest sister and her friend (who was spending the night and is basically my other youngest sister) and then sunday i got my fancy lasagne roll-ups and a lot of naptime, which was also delightful! i also got some dollars, which are going straight into the savings account for when i find an apartment that doesn’t make me wear my headphones all the time in order to avoid my neighbors’ noise. speaking of which, they were acting up the other day, circa 11 pm, and i decided that if they were allowed to be so constantly noisy, i would be too, so i started singing. now, i’m not bragging here, but i do happen to have a bit of a voice, and after i got myself warmed up, i busted out the maya sakamoto anime opening themes and let ’em have it. sure enough, it quieted right down, and sure enough, i haven’t heard too much out of ’em since. i believe we term that a victory. (^_^) so remember, where cops and landlords fail to quiet your overly-rambunctious neighbors, try singing. loudly. in foreign languages. (^_^) anyhow, back to saturday, and the other youngest sister. she, being nearly sixteen, and more than usually precocious for her age, gave us quite an entertaining time, especially after she’d eaten all the merangue off her pie and had three sodas in the course of one evening. 
now, i’m not saying she was being silly, i’m just pointing you to my new up ‘do (partially obscured by the darkness of the window, thank god) and i’ll let you make up your own mind. (^_^) in other news, NaNo fast approaches. a little too quickly for my tastes, if truth is to be told. (^^;) i’ve got a translation contest i’m entering (due date: Nov 30 ahahahahahahaha–) and i’ve decided to finally take the plunge and learn shorthand. i’ve decided on gregg, via the free textbook thing linked precisely one post ago, which is the anniversary edition. i do have a book on the simplified edition on reserve at the library, but it hasn’t come in yet. it’s not that difficult necessarily, but i can see already that it requires more time than i’ve got before NaNo to get up to speed with. even the simplified edition, which has far fewer short forms (181, yeah, “fewer”) and even with the realization that i probably don’t need most of those short forms (not going to be using a lot of business terms in this year’s novel, although the governmental ones will come in handier than you might at first imagine), i think it’s still a little much to expect to use it to write my whole novel. which is a shame, because that means i’ll have to type some of it up at work, which is always a cause of consternation and wrist pain. while at home, i’ll be typing my words on my lovely Brother EP43 electric portable typewriter. that’s right! my old new baby, complete with aftermarket fimo-clay platen knob (made by your truly)! oh yeah, that’s how we do it! (^_^)-b 
that is my avatar for the NaNo boards. i donated some dollars to Camp NaNo this past summer (founding donor ftw~) so there’s a little halo above my avatar on the boards, and it’s in just the right place to give the brother a halo. it’s an angelic typewriter? (not the way my plot is, or rather isn’t progressing…) it’s a thermal machine (meaning that instead of each letter slapping against an ink ribbon in order to make an impression on the paper in the shape of a letter, it heats up a thermal tape with electrical impulses and bonds the ink to the paper in the shape of a letter) only i can’t get cartridges for it any more, so i’m typing on thermal fax paper. which comes in 96′ foot rolls. I KNOW, HOW AWESOME IS THAT? PRETTY AWESOME! (^_^) and i will definitely be taking it to write-ins with me. the kick off party is at the library branch that’s literally down the street from me, so i’ll be going to that (omigod next sunday!) and i’ll be carting it out to as many write-ins as i can get to. probably, that means the sunday afternoon ones, but if there are some more that fit my schedule, i’ll be there, too. i have the whole week of thanksgiving off, so i should be able to fit something in there. anyhow, i’m off to find something (anything?) out about my plot, so i’ll let you get back to your normal lives now. if you’re on google+ and want to find some fellow NaNoists over there, here’s a search for you: https://plus.google.com/s/nanowrimo. enjoy~ ~meredeth. (this post brought to you by OMIGODITSNANOAGAINIMALITTLEEXCITEDCANYOUTELL!!!???) .
FACT 168 – it’s that time again, kiddos~
that’s right, kiddos, * NOVEMBER IS COMING~ (insert spooky ghosty noises here!) i have absolutely no bloody clue what i’m going to write this year, but i saw a phrase on the nano forums that i thought would make the absolute perfect title, so the title of this year’s nano novel is (drum roll please!) Welcome to the Rebellion kii~ *sparkly sound effect* i’m thinking the subtitle might be You Are Not A Cheater, but i don’t really know what, if anything, that has to do with my story (yet), we’ll just have to wait and see. given what i’ve been watching lately (No. 6) i believe i will be writing something about fake utopias, but i’m thinking that the rebellion will actually be the utopia. i.e., a rebellion succeeds, but establishes itself as a more or less perma-rebellion in order to — yeah, this is sort of where it breaks down… anyway, there’s still, what three minutes before NaNo starts ** and IT’S NOT LIKE I’VE GOT ANYTHING ELSE TO DO. *cough* okay, then. back to work. *** * i don’t know how many of you are children, i expect not many of you, but in a rare show of ebullience, meredeth decided that all of you are now younger than she. this may have something to do with her upcoming birthday, but honestly, we try not to pry. it’s safer. ** fifteen days, but we won’t tell if you won’t. (^_-) *** move along, folks, move along. nothing to see here.
FACT 167 – told you so~
website redesign: GETTO shita~ 
i feel so awesome~ one ginormous image, one tinier image, and some fancy CSS, and some of you may actually be able to see the fancy fonts i mean you to see. for those of you without CSS3-compliant browsers, things may be a bit messed up, although it should still be fine. the shot to the left here is the idealised version i see on my own screen. (^_^) 
in other news, i have indeed finished Prince of the Sun, Princess of the Moon. and indeed people were shafted. it was pretty harsh, especially for our poor old King Brook. that dude had Tragic Flaw written all over him, and indeed he Fell. it was very entertaining. (^_^) as i said, i’ll be putting it up here after a little revision work. it’s actually two short stories that were originally published in The Sneaker magazine in the mid 90s, the first one about the brother and sister of the title. the second story is about them, too, but mostly about the relationship between them and their father, Brook, and how Brook’s obsession with power dooms them all, not to mention the doom he brings on Moss, and by extention, Lodoss. having finished that cheerful chapter of the Lodoss story, i’ve been digging around in my collection of imported books to see what i might like to translate next. i’ve got every lodoss book ever published (i think) as well as the RPG guidebooks (all three), so of course i could do something there. but i’ve also got the first of the Moribito books which could be entertaining. i know the anime’s been keeping my attention (the first four episodes anyway) and there’s plenty more where that came from. it’s the first in a 10-volume series. and it’s ostensibly children’s literature, so it might be easier. i’ve also got kino no tabi although that’s already been translated, and indeed i also own the english version, but the english version has the chapters in the wrong order, so who knows what else is weird there. and there’s a good 12 or 14 of those published. the other thing i’ve got, and the one i picked up for a little perusal, is a collection of natsuhiko kyogaku‘s “short” stories, which is actually 616 pages, and only the first of two similarly-sized volumes. they’re detective/ghost stories, and i read through the japanese wikipedia page to see if i really wanted to attempt it, and all i have to say is that if the stories are as good as these summaries have lead me to believe, i’m not gonna be able to put the book down. kyogoku’s debut novel was translated and published in english not to long ago (summer of the ubume) and apparently did well enough that they did up another one (loups-garous) so some shorts might be popular. of course, with someone else already doing his stuff, and all of these books being fairly recent, who knows what licensing madness i may be wading into. not that i’m particularly worried about legality, i guess. hobbists such as myself usually need only be served with a C&D letter to scare us before we run for the delete button… anyhow, if you’ve got any personal favorites out there that you’d love to see translated, drop me a comment. i prefer stuff that’s modern, speculative, and weird, and keep in mind that a 4-inch square book with 125 pages of normal-sized print took me a month to get through, but please, Suggest Away~~~
FACT 166 – the noonday sun
well well well, hisashiburi desu ne~~~ okay. here’s the gist: didn’t move. here’s the longer gist: lease-breaking fee was waived. property manager then realized the apartment she showed me WAS ALREADY TAKEN. so, i made appointment to sign lease for a different apartment. i went to the appointment, but NO ONE WAS IN THE OFFICE. i got pissed, i looked at other apartments. i broke my blinds. i had the blinds replaced, but the ones they put in WERE TOO SHORT. i went to complain. paid rent, COMPLAINED. +4 weeks, nothing happened. went to pay rent, and complain some more, discovered property manager had been fired. “new” guy turns out to have a head on his shoulders. neighbors mysteriously shut up. blind replaced with properly sized one. I DON’T HAVE TO MOVE. general rejoicing. OH. MY. FREAKIN. LORD. i cannot tell you want kind of a ridiculous SAGA i have been having with this bloody place. it’s like, 2011 came along and decided to be a dick about it, and i just had to put up with it until it went away and found someone more entertaining to be a dick to. glad that’s happened now. and the other day i saw my upstairs neighbor coming out of a two bedroom with the “new” property manager (he used to be the assistant manager, now he’s the Manager, and, indeed, the only person working in the bloody office, so he’s not exactly new, he’s just “new”) so i think he’ll be moving out here before too much longer. i know he wants to have his music up, coz every once in a while i’ll hear it again. i’ve decided not to say anything unless it goes on for a bit, coz as long as i don’t have to put up with a constant heart beat in my floor/ceiling, i /can/ deal, after all, i’m not a /total/ bitch, i’m just saying that on a monday night, maybe we could turn it down. enjoying my delightfully civil apartment as i have been, i’ve been getting on a bit with the translating. i’m almost finished with one of the Lodoss gaiden novels, a sort of prequel side story called Prince of the Sun, Princess of the Moon. it’s about how the demon king was summoned, the demon king that Beld and Wort and Karla et al later have to destroy, the demon king that causes the Soul Crusher to be what it is, the demon king that kills off Beld’s lovely lady? yeah, that demon king. turns out that the Curse of Anyone Who Utters the Phrase, “I Will Conquer All Lodoss” took it’s lovely tool on one of them there Moss dukes, and thus the demon king was summoned. i won’t give you too many spoilers at the moment, because i’m going to put it up here when i’m done with it. i’m almost finished, got about two more sections to go, so with any luck it’ll be some time this week. after that, i’m either going back to work on Olochi, which is a creepy semi-post-modernish gothic mystery with bizarre fashion terms that i have to look up and sentences that are even longer than this one IN EVERY PARAGRAPH, /or/ i’m going to work on the manga i just bought, which is GRANDEEK, which is about a cute girl with a big sword. which is never bad. (^_^) in other news, i’ve decided to revamp the old blog a bit. with the CSS getting a shiny new coat of awesome, i thought i’d give it a go. mostly, of course it’s for the fonts, but those rounded corners are pretty hot, too. or at least, they are if you’re w/ mozilla. otherwise, not so much. i almost got myself a wordpress blog, but then i decided not to be lazy and just code a bloody theme, instead of stealing someone’s fancy wordpress theme. you’ve got to admit, they do have some hot stuff out there. some crap, too of course, but who doesn’t… in other other news… 
knitting my sister a pair of socks. this one took me a bloody month, and then i had to buy a smaller set of needles for the ribbing, but eventually i finished it. now i just have to make the other one… ossum.