Yearly Archive: 2014

Second verse, same as the first.

After several hours of unsuccessfully attempting sleep, I now sit in the family room. My spot on the couch. Knitting. Laptop. Fireplace. Buffy and/or Angel. Dragons. A cat or two. The usual.

This is getting very tiresome. (See what I did there?) I have things I need to do tomorrow today, reasons I need to be functional. I’m guessing that ‘not sleeping’ is not a stop on the road for success.

On a related note, do I have any artistically inclined friends out there? I see a great need for a ‘Hello Insomnia’ (a la Kitty).

Not my brightest moment.

Since my Hitofude is on timeout, I’ve started a new sweater which calls for 1,470 yards of yarn. I am using a yarn that comes in 110-yard units.

SO MANY LOOSE ENDS.

Can’t sleep, Friday morning edition.

Well, since the sleeping thing clearly isn’t going to happen, I might as well be up and knitting. Unfortunately, my Hitofude is in timeout for non-compliance issues. So, this leaves me with that favorite task of all knitters: swatching. But, since I’ll be working on a sweater, I figure I should actually make sure it’s going to end up the right size. As an added bonus, if there’s any knitting that will put me to sleep, it’s got to be swatching.

Calling all knitters: Help me figure out where I went wrong.

20141201-hitofudeSo, as you may remember, I’ve been working on the Hitofude cardigan. Things were tooling along, and, on Sunday, I got to the second and third tricky bits: Undoing the provisional cast-ons (2), and performing three-needle bind-offs for the sleeves. (The first tricky bit was the provisional cast-ons themselves.)

So, yeah. Finished the sleeves, and read the part of the pattern where it says how many stitches I should have: 290.  (more…)

Ask the HiveMind: Google+ API horror stories?

Have any of y’all ever gone through the process to get a Google+ API key? Any pointers, or is it pretty straightforward? (A girl can hope, right?)

And, what did you do with it? How easy / hard was it to use? How sorts of ritual sacrifices did you have to make?

Basically, I’m looking to hear about any experiences with the whole process, if you’re interested in sharing.

Ouch.

While I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Drupal, I personally don’t find it to be the worst of the wiki / content-management platforms out there. I also know a number of people who are responsible for Drupal installations. Which is why I had to wince (instead of break out laughing) when I saw this today:

20141103-drupal

(Originally found on istheinternetonfire.com, and linking to this Drupal PSA.)

Knitting Update: Two finished objects, and a new work in progress.

I realized that I haven’t provided a knitting update in quite some time, and that you’re all probably dying of curiosity, wondering what I’m up to. Since I don’t want you all to pine away (and since I finally hooked up my phone to my computer to copy some pictures over), I figured I’d get around to making an update.

TL; DR: I finished two pairs of fingerless mitts, have started a lace cardigan, and am a slob.

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Yarn store loot!

Goodness. Yesterday was such a treat. Three yarn stores in two towns, and much yarn acquired. And, all while staying within budget! (It should be noted that my Japanese genes appear to have been overwhelmed by yarn awesomeness, and I completely failed to take any pictures of any of the stores, even though I specifically told myself to do just that when departing on the grand adventure. My apologies.)

The first stop was WEBS, where I picked up:

Then, we went to Northampton Wools, where Shama fell in love with baby alpaca, which led to the acquisition of 2 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns Villa in Periwinkle, which are already well on their way to being a pair of Simply Warm fingerless mitts. (Amusingly, while we were there, I saw a yarn that immediately pinged my, “Oooh! Colors!” receptors. Then I realized it was the chunky version of the sock weight Misty Alpaca in Pico that I’d been knitting for the past few days (and, in fact, had on the needles in my purse). At least I’m consistent.)

After a very yummy lunch at India Palace, we ventured on to Sheep and Shawl, a cute little store that specializes in consignment of all sorts of fiber-related products, including yarn, finished knitted and crocheted items, goats’ milk products, felted objects, and more. Here, I bought:

  • An adorable finished hat, because it looks incredibly cute on Shamala, and her birthday is next month. (I would have given it to her anyway, but this gave me a good excuse.)
  • A Lantern Moon cool sheep felt keychain pouch.
  • 1 skein of Manos Del Uruguay Fino in Inkwell. Again, this yarn has no specific project destiny yet, but at 490 yards, would make a fairly reasonably-sized shawl.

And that, my friends, is the sum of my adventures in yarn for yesterday.

Going on an adventure!

In a few minutes, the four of us (Jer, Shama, Shamamama, and I) will be leaving on a mini-adventure. We’re going to go to Northampton. My hosts are so kind, as the primary purpose of this visit is to allow me to visit WEBS. As you can imagine, I’m very excited!

There will also be food, candles, food, and other meanderings. And, once we get home, I suspect that we will be continuing our Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon. (Shama’s never seen it, and we’re doing our best to get her hooked. We watched the first season yesterday.)

I hope you all are well. And remember, there’s still time to let me know if you’re going to join us for sushi in Sudbury on Saturday night!

Just to be clear…

I am not responsible for the weather in Massachusetts this week. I did not bring it with me from Seattle. I would not do such a thing to my dear friends here.

That is all.