It seems that in the nearly two years I've been a temporary permanent resident of the US, the rules have changed. Two years ago, an immigration attorney told me that I could apply for citizenship when I applied for permanent permanent resident status (the earliest I can do that, incidentally, is 90 days prior to the expiration of my temporary permanent residency; the start of next week), but now I need three years of permanent residency (since I'm a spouse of a US citizen; otherwise, it would be even longer, and I'd have had a harder time gaining permanent residency) and I don't know if the two years I've had will count. Be that as it may, I can still apply before my British passport expires, even if the 2 years don't count.
Meanwhile, I'm currently working on my second sock. The first one went reasonably well, but there were some niggles. Things I didn't get right. First, the cast-on (figure-8; I do socks toe-up, to avoid a need to graft and so I can cope with running out of yarn) was horribly loose. This was partly because it's not a great cast-on, and partly because doing it with DPNs has a tendency to mess things up and loosen it to the point of its degeneration into holes. For this sock, I switched to a circular (but still square; I much prefer squares at this needle size for their controllability and even tension) and to Judy's Magic Cast-On, and the combination has eased things tremendously. The short-row heel works well for me, but on the first sock I started it a little early. Easily fixed. The final problem is that the 2x2 ribbing I used for the cuff of the first sock is too loose and floppy. I'll still be using it for the second sock, but for future pairs, since I'm using the nice simple sewn bind-off, I can just switch to a 1x1 rib that'll fix that easily.
And eventually, I'll start doing fancy cabled socks and the like. Not yet, though.
Oooh, jealous about the socks. My knitting expert and former coworker (who got be back into knitting) gifted me with some really nice self-striping sock yarn over a year ago, and I've been too scared to attempt doing anything with them yet (even though I have several sets of DPNs I inherited from my mother).
ReplyDeleteSo, as far as the immigration thingy goes, you aren't "grandfathered" in under the old rules? That bites. My SIL used to do immigration law, but not anymore.
word verifcation: "haties"
My understanding would be that if they change the rules on you in the middle of processing your application, then your application gets processed under the old rules. However, that's not what's happening here; naturalization is a completely different process from immigration, and so because I haven't submitted any N-series forms yet, I'm not on that track. So I get the new rules and lump it.
ReplyDelete