It’s Wednesday. And I’m feeling random!

• I went to my knitting group tonite. I almost didn’t go, but decided to kind of at the last minute. It was totally worth it. Although most of the discussion was about spinning. Funny that since almost everyone who is in the spinning group is in the knitting group too. There are some people who only come to spinning. And there are some people who only go to knitting. We’ll convert them eventually.
  
• All my knitting projects are causing me difficulties lately. First I didn’t have page two of the pattern for one project. Then I didn’t have the needle I needed for another. Then I went to cast on something new, and found out I didn’t have enough yarn. I was so excited about the colors I had picked (note – these are for three different projects):

and and

• I pulled out the pattern to cast on with the first yarn today. The pattern says you need two of EACH not two total. Aigh!!! If anyone knows what the color number is for the first one, which is Koigu KPPPM in an unknown colorway, please let me know. I’m looking for 2nd skeins in all of the koigu. You can see the dye lot numbers by clicking on the thumbnails and looking at the description in flickr. *sigh*

• I’m calling Knit Visualizer 2.0 “done”. Don’t get too excited. That just means I’m not going to be tweaking (much) in the code. There are still a gazillion things to do. Change the website over to use a different shopping cart so I can implement my nefarious discount code plan for current users of KV1.2. Update the manual with all the new features. This will take a while. I have to take a lot of screenshots. I have to fix up the demo code so there can be a demo that works (except when I don’t want it to). Look through all my lists (there are a lot of them) to make sure I got in everything I want in it. Decide on a price (this one is mostly done, but it’s still a secret). Build a Vista icon so that the icons don’t look stupid. Fix any bugs my diligent beta testers find. I’ve kinda taken off the past week from doing KV stuff. Thanksgiving and all that you know. Time to get back on it. I’d like to do the release before 2008 gets here.
• Spinning is more fun than knitting these days. Something about not wanting to knit on the troublesome projects for christmas or that have not enough yarn. I’ve also discovered the joys of three ply yarn and how absolutely amazing it can a yarn look. A bit of navajo plying has been fun. More time at the wheel will let me create a traditional three ply, made out of three different singles.
• I have to go to the post office tomorrow. Not just to drop off packages into the happy package slot of pre-paid goodness. But I have to actually Stand. In. Line. I can’t tell you how much I’m dreading this. Normally it’s not bad. Walk up, pay the international postage rate, walk out. Done! This time of year it’s a bit of a gamble to see how many people will be in line and how many postal employees there will be dealing with the people in line. Not to mention the last time I went to stand in line and the woman behind me was most certainly not respecting the unwritten amount of space required between each person standing in line. I couldn’t help but hit her with my purse every time I shifted from one impatient foot to the other. I pulled out my sock knitting and tried to make the lights reflect off my DPNs into her eyes and blind her, but it didn’t work very well since the finish on my DPNs isn’t very shiny. I tried to make a point of the proper amount of line-standing-spacing by keeping a good distance from the person in front of me; but she was not to be influenced by such subtle tactics. In the end I had to satisfy myself with a good long glare at her, which she ignored, or didn’t even notice. So take note, my wonderful international customers. I do like your orders, but when you get your package from me, know that I have gone the extra mile (or twelve) for you by braving the post office in order to get reasonable postage rates so that I don’t have to charge you $16.00 to ship you a 5 ounce package.
• That last paragraph was really long. I hope you didn’t wander off during it.

Time to get to bed and dream of knitting presents with enough yarn and the right needles for the short knitting list I have.

I had this book hanging around on the coffee table and the kids have taken to ‘reading’ through it from time to time. Katie has been busy tracing and copying anything interesting in the house. So I found this drawing in the pile of things she was working on one day. Pretty cool, huh?

Cool picture of big holes in the ground: Click here.

The diamond mine pictured is I think one of the ones that the Ice Road Truckers go to.   I love that show.

Also, for those of us with kids. Haven’t you always wanted to do this?

http://s92.photobucket.com/albums/l3/kingeryck/?action=view&current=angrymom.jpg

A few things strike me about this picture.

1. The baby looks pretty happy to me. Was it happy during the taping process?
2. There is no explanation with the picture.   I’m just so curious as to what caused this event to happen
3. The duck that is up on the wall next to the baby – and you can see the baby has it’s hand grabbing at the duck.  “If ducky is here with me, everyting is A-ok!”

Some knitting is happening – although slowly.  Rainbow Cardigan is on the sleeves now; but it’s a big lump of rainbow so a picture wouldn’t show you much.  Monkey socks only get knit on occasionally; although they are always with me in my purse. I’m really hoping to finish them in a fairly timely manner (read that as “before this winter completely ends”), and since winter hasn’t even started, I should be good to go on it.

1. Look down at your lace knitting and say, “Hmm… that YO looks twice as big as it should”.
2. Look a bit further, and decide, “I’ll just drop down that set of 10 stitches a few rows and fix it”.
3. Let your husband distract you every 5 minutes as he says, “Ooooh – look at this new car configuration” as he’s playing Need for Speed: Carbon* on the couch next to you.
4. Spend the next 1.5 hours gently tinking, coaxing, and generally pleading with your knitting to “Get back ON the needles properly”
5. Spend another 20 minutes ripping back until you think it’s safe, and then gently putting the knitting back on the needle. Tinking one more row to make sure you have all your yarn overs in place, etc.

Things you should do:

1. Don’t look at the knitting. The YO’s are fine.
2. Really. Stop looking at the knitting. It’s fine. Nobody but you would notice anyway. Even you won’t notice once you get another inch knit.
3. Tell your husband “No more talking! I mean it!”. You have my permission to forcibly take the controller away and shut the xbox off if needed.
4. Go to bed early. Really – you need all your rest for the birthday party of inflated air happening tomorrow
5. Read in bed if you insist that it’s too early to go to bed.

* Don’t bother getting Need for Speed: Carbon. Need for Speed: Most Wanted was 1000 times better, so just play that one again instead of playing a lesser game with more flippy graphics than content.

This is amazing:

http://www.petegoldlust.com/carvedcrayons.html

It’s making me look at my kid’s crayon box in a whole new light. What must it take to have the patience and skill to carve at such a small level!? It really makes me want to try it for some reason!

Thanks for everyone’s nice comments on my blue yarn. It’s really squishy and wonderful. I can’t wait to knit something with it; but want to make sure I pick the right project for it. So far I’ve been thinking a fair isle sweater with this as the accent color; and a dark blue as the main color. I’ve got some yarn in my stash that it might work with (from Brooks Farm) but it’ll really need a swatch as I’ve never used the other yarn, and don’t know how it’ll behave when washed. That of course means using my handspun and wasting it in a swatch. Maybe I’ll think about this for a little bit more first.

Oh – and why haven’t I posted lately? Well, I’ve been sucked into moving my blog over to my own host; and have been playing around with it. I suppose I should just move it and be done with it; but I’m afraid I’ll have to delete the whole thing (for about the 4th time) because if I upgrade a plug in or something and it does bad things… We’ll have to see. I’ll let you know if you need to start pointing your browser somewhere else.

I’m also disgusted with the terrible pictures I take; so I’m working on a small do it yourself project at home to make taking pictures a bit easier. If it works, you’ll be sick of all the pictures I post of the random crap I’ll take pictures of. Just you wait :)

At work, my group decided it would be fun for everyone to make a portrait of themselves to put outside their cube. Using an online tool - The portraits followed the same basic format. It’s actually kind of scary how accurate some of the portraits are, given the rudimentary nature of the portraits. It took me some time and thinking, but I finally came up with mine:

(click for bigger, and to read text on shirt)

Build your own here. (note there are many different sites to do this same thing, and different sites offer different hats, facial features, t-shirts, etc. Google “Build South Park Character” to find other sites. I had to photoshop my portrait to add the items that I wanted.)

So this strikes me as a bizarre type of quiz, but I took it, and so there you go:

You Are the Index Finger

You are ambitious, driven, and capable. You aren’t afraid to take responsibility for your actions – or place the blame on whoever deserves it. You are honest, free thinking, and objective. You see things in your own way – and you aren’t afraid to let everyone know about it.You get along well with: The Thumb Stay away from: The Ring Finger

What Finger Are You?

Maybe I’ll leave it up to my friends who know me to tell you if this is a true description or not.

Pictures later of the Big Pink Blanket Of Doom.

In the trek from Colorado to Washington, I entrusted my husband with the care of my orchids and other plants. Due to space considerations I was limited to one small box that could hold all the plant pots. They needed to be kept out of the cold (it was February after all) and treated gently. Well, they were kept out of the cold, but gentle wasn’t really a possibility. If any of them actually stayed IN their pots i’d be amazed.

Almost three months later I’m examining the plants to see how well they’re doing. I had just repotted some of them a few weeks before the move (probably not the best idea), and one had a little baby plant on it that had grown spontaneously near the top. It had roots jut hanging out in mid air and was growing quite well. The roots were about 2.5″ to 3″ long – so I cut that off the bigger plant and gave it it’s own pot. Well, it was bruised and beat up on the trip here, but it’s recovering quite well:

The yellow arrows are pointing out the new shoots coming out the bottom! I’ve been trying to water them just enough, not overwatered, but not letting them stay dry very long. The top of the plant had another two or four leaves out the middle that were broken off en route. I wasn’t sure if it’d survive, but it seems to be thriving!

A few of the other orchids aren’t doing so well. I won’t show pictures of those because they are just sad. I have one that hasn’t grown for two or more years. I had ‘rescued’ it from the grocery store. I realize now that was a huge mistake. I’ve bought one more orchid since we’ve been here to make up for all those that are dying; and i must have gotten it on it’s first day in the store, as it hadn’t had time to go into shock or be unhappy about the lack of light. It’s doing really well, hasn’t lost any flowers and still looks the proper amount of green on it’s leaves. (You can see that orchid here. It’s the one with the long purple spray of flowers)

I took the kids to the Butterfly Pavilion when we were attempting to keep them busy whilst waiting for the movers to show up. i took the camera and played around with taking pictures of flowers and things.

Click for a larger image. I didn’t crop this or touch it up in photoshop or anything (I did reduce the image size to 1000 pixels instead of 2500 or whatever the default size is). think it’s pretty darn good for a point and shoot camera and a person who has no photography skills at all.