Gearing Up to begin again...

Okay, next project on the list to work on is the shawl that I started over a year ago from the New Style of Heirloom Knitting-a Japanese book that I use the charts to make the patterns, rather than the actual written word. Even so, the charts are pretty easy to follow--but you do have to know what the stitch charts mean.

The shawl is a part of the jacket on page 32 of the book. The yarn I'm using is a worsted weight mohair, but it's so hairy that you can't see the slight pattern. I'm hoping that once I block the shawl, it will open up the pattern.

We'll see.

I drew the 10 of cups today. Normally thought of as the "your wish comes true" card--but I couldn't determine what my "wish" was. I was so sleepy today, that I nearly fell asleep at my desk, and DID go home and sleep for 2 hours. Perhaps that's what I wished for? SLEEP? Well, I have to admit, I did get caught up on the sleep I lost last night.

Even so, I think that I would rather that my dog could talk human. Don't laugh--it might happen one day!

Tuesday before Thanksgiving

Two days before Turkey, and what do I do?
I stop at the store and I bump into you.
You've stolen my space and I find that I've got
Not another left to me, in this big parking lot.

I'm tired from running from this store to that
The dinner list waits because YOU want to chat
I haven't the time or the listening to spare
For I've shopping to do, well, as much as I dare.

So off to the line where a wizened old fart
Won't let go the handle of the last little cart
I haven't a cart or a tote or a purse
Just my small wallet clutch, and as I start to curse...
I find an idea, lodged up in my head
With the list ticking off, I begin with some dread,
and hurry my feets to the back of the store,
and I locate a cart, just a single, one more.

I grasp it with gusto, I head for the aisle
the list keeps on ticking, and after a while
I find that it has it's own meter and rhyme
So I hunt down each aisle for the items in kind:

Here's pumpkin, here's apple, and blueberry too
Filling for pies, I've got baking to do!
The pie crust, the bread loaf the season's and sage
The rest of the stuff from "The Turkey Prep Page",
The taters the onions, and apple and pan
I'll get though Thanksgiving, yes, I think I can!

I stand in a line for an hour or so
Waiting to checkout these items and GO.
I pay for my things and they drop in the cart,
And I speed down the breezeway and pass the old fart--
Out of the store and I look for my car
Oh, there it is, by the road--not all that far!
I run to the car, and I unlock the door, and
I pack all the items in trunk and on floor.
I climb in the seat and get ready to drive
Whewing! And sighing--thank God I'm alive.

I drive my way home my order in tow,
I park in my driveway, just rarin' to go.
I unpack my sacks, and exclaim "Oh MY word!"
I am so stupid.
I forgot the BIRD!

Tenna

I hope your Thanksgiving is happy and loaded with good food, good people you love and more good times than your heart can bear!

Mittens are done!

Aren't they just the cutest?

My own little pattern! The gauntlet is crochet, just a bt of loop stitch and picots.

They fit like--well, a glove. Just the right # of stitches around, just the right # of rows long.

I can't believe they turned out so well, and I am very pleased with them.

Today's Tarot card was the 3 of pentacles--has to do with maintaining the team--we had a party today for the November birthdays. And I don't always partake of the cake, but this time I did--the cake was very good. I'm finding that I hate frosting more and more the older I get. I ended up wiping most of it off onto the plate to get to the REAL dessert!

Well, thanks for lookin' at the mitts. Leave me comments!!

Ravelry

I didn't understand the draw of Ravelry. Now that I'm a member, I understand completely--well, at least better than I did several days ago.

The consummate center for bending the credit card for women who knit and crochet. If you are already at the top of your credit line, do NOT sign up for this....warning, warning, danger Will Robison...and I mean that with capital letters.

Now if you are able to control your urges and just look at people's creations without succumbing to the "where DID you find that pattern?" mentality, then this is the place for you. EYE CANDY lurks in every corner. A woman who knits can spend an entire WEEK shopping (can you say "shop til you drop?")...not only that, but the user can upload pictures (albeit the manner of upload is somewhat tedious--you have to upload to flickr.com, then TRANSFER the pictures to Ravelry...Flickr.com charges a fee if you go over their maximum allowance for uploads, so if you have a VERY large stash, with a large # of patterns, you might want to keep track of your stash and patterns on your own hard drives or cds instead..a rewritable cd and cd writer required.) of their stash and patterns, projects you're working on and those in the queque, track your needles and chat with other knitters/crafters or email them through the use of forums--rather than through yahoo groups. All in all, the be all and end all center for the knitter/crocheter.

Somewhere in the middle of my fun with this website, windows upload downloaded an update to my pc for my video display, and perhaps something else, because it totally ruined my experience with the forums, and with viewing pictures--or it could have been an upgrade to my accellerator, which lowers resolution of pictures to make websites load faster. One or the othere is responsible, but I am not sure yet--because by the time I finished finaggling with the computer, the day was over, I ached in every bone in my body from sitting at the pc all day, and fell fast asleep in my chair, having done NO KNITTING WHATSOEVER ON A DAY WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN!

Thanks a lot Ravelry.

So today, I am going to force myself to stay away from Ravelry, and save the rest of my stash/project lists and queque entry for another weekend. I'm tired, and need rest...so imagine my surprise when I pulled the 4 of Swords. A picture of an effigy with 4 swords--3 on the base of the effigy and one hanging in the tree nearby. The meaning of the card is clear--GET SOME REST! So, even though I'm taking some time out to post here, I am later going to my in-laws for lunch. I get my best naps when I drive!

The mittens are coming along. I finally started on the second mitt, and it's now about half done. I should be able to finish the hand part today. Then I will work on the thumbs...then on the gauntlet. I have some very specific ideas on how I'm going to finish them off now, and I'm beginning to get excited about the prospect of finishing them.

I also drew out the Sharon Miller Princess Shawl that has been languishing as a WIP in my knitting closet for about 2 years now..I have perhaps 30 more points to go on the border, and I can start on the body of the shawl. This particular shawl is one of my more intense projects, and the border is no exception--made in fine THREAD, rather than yarn, the knitting of it is not what I call relaxing, but the OUTCOME is worth it, because the lace is just beautiful! I'm knitting it on size 1 circular inox needles--nice pointy needles, with only a bit of drag--and since they are circular, the weight of the project is in my lap, rather than on my hands/wrists. The project is posted to my project list on Ravelry. I have no idea if the general public can view my notebook, but if you can, my screen name is drapert.

In the meantime, enjoy your day, and I will post more later when I get home if I am not too late.

SciFi and UFOs

Okay, so it's not about UFO's--have I seen one? Maybe. Don't know. If I claim it's a UFO, then it's no longer a UFO--am I right? After all, I've identified it as a UFO...so now it's an IUFO, which is rather a contradiction in terms.

Sort of like the term infinity plus one.

The Tarot Card for the day is the 8 of Swords Reversed. Titled Bondage by the Sacred circle, Robin Wood shows a woman, wrapped up in a sheet, tied and blindfolded on a rocky beach, with 8 swords plunged into the earth behind her. Upright, not a very good card--meaning that you're basically "hemmed in" on all sides and won't be able to make any advancements today--however in reversed orientation, it means that the issues that were causing you to feel "hemmed in" are going to lift a bit today...and let's face it, IT'S FRIDAY!!!!

A rather simplistic reading, but I do look forward to Friday, and to the END of Friday, when I can look into the weekend and figure out what I want to do, instead of what everyone else wants me to do.

I got invited to Ravelry today. So I now have to sign up for a Flickr Account, as I didn't have one before. This blogging/ravelry/working on the band website/trying to get to my own website on geocities...is creating a web miasma for me...so I feel like I am surrounded on all sides by web-hosts and rather becoming my own little promoter. I don't know if I like that or not.

Does this mean that if computers are destroyed, and all my information on the web is lost, that I will cease to be? OOOO. Now there's a sci-fi thriller for you. Maybe I'll have Sandra Bullock to play my part in the movie.

So..off to Flickr I must go. Too bad I can't just ftp stuff over there. FTP makes it much easier.

Okay, Flick Account signed in. Ravelry ID is drapert--I am all set to go! This weekend, I upload pictures of my stash and my projects!

I'm late, I'm late, for a very Important Date!

Remember the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland?

Well, now that you've got a picture of me (buck teeth and all)...yes, I'm running a tad late (huff..puff). So this will be quick and dirty.

I've got the dreaded Mitten disease. I haven't knit for at least 3 days--although I did ply my spinning. I also notice that I'm over-spinning sometimes, and the single is all kinked up. I'm going to have to treadle slower, or draft faster--one or the other.

I have to replace a drum head on my son's drum--and I have been sort of putting that off for another day--when? Perhaps tonight when I get home. It will take the better part of an evening, which means I won't be able to knit or spin tonight.

The Tarot Card for the day is the Chariot.
Usually, this card has something to do with cars...either buying a new one, or getting the old one fixed, and it's likely that I am going to get a call today about my car--I've got some repair work that's been waiting for the Body Shop Manager to get back from Medical leave. It could be just a reminder card for me to remember to call them. Either way, looks like I'll be taking my car in to get the body work done on it. It means I'll have to drive the loaner--yuck.

And I'm feeling a little like Alice's rabbit--stressed and on the run, also a chariot card expression...spinning your wheels and really getting nowhere. I've also got a dental appointment coming up later today, getting a tooth pulled (yuck again), and therefore may not feel like doing ANYTHING after work. We'll have to see.

So we'll see how the card ends up applying to me. It's pretty amazing. Yesterday, I pulled the sun card, and the day was beautiful, and I worked hard, got everything I wanted to do done, everything went bright and cheery, and it was just a happy day. And today, I draw the Chariot. It's just not fair.

The Ghost of Coffeemakers Past

Yesterday, our old coffeemaker was retired for the newer one with cool bells and whistles.

My husband said a few words, we unplugged the lifeline from the wall socket, and pushed it into the back corner. It will find its way to the garage sale bin today, I think. It's sad, though. The end of an era. The loss of a long-time friend, but it just wasn't doing the job anymore. It was tired and really old--and the water wasn't pouring through the filter very well anymore..not even with the cleaning solution! So the white Proctor Silex--and I don't believe they are made anymore, has been thrown over for a black Mr. Coffee with shiney silver chrome and a TIMER.

You heard that right. A timer! No more getting up with my husband at 4:30 in the morning to put coffee and water on--now I can do it the night before! And this new pup has an auto turn off for the two of us, who are horrible at remembering to shut it down. It has 2 brew strengths, regular and strong, because I am no lightweight when it comes to coffee. It has a cleaning feature and a "brew it now" feature and a pause feature, so you can get a cup without waiting for it to cycle.

I have to say, I'm in love. I called my husband into the kitchen to look at it when I attached it's umbilical cord to the wall....

"Darling, come here and look at the new coffeemaker!" I said.

After waiting patiently for five minutes, he appears in the doorway.

"What?" He says impatiently. "I'm watching my show...oh, new coffeemaker." He brightens a little, turns on his heels and heads back for his easy chair. My husband clearly doesn't understand the full impact of the moment! So I sigh, pat the new coffeemaker on the top of it's water reservoir, and walk over to my computer.

I can't wait to taste the new coffee I bought. Patience, dear, patience.

So this morning I am drinking a medium roast with caramel flavoring from Meijer's Thrifty Acres. I can't wait to get some hefty dark roast, and REALLY test this new contraption.

Did I knit last night? No. I have joined the league of web designers. Now, I know how to code in HTML, as long as there is something there initially--in reality, all you do is look for the real "words" and update them. I've offered to edit the Grand Rapids and District Pipe Band's website--and have updated the Member's Page and the Upcoming Events Page. It will be a while before I can get pictures to upload. And so I spent all day reconnoitering these two pages. The Member's Page was completly redone. She looks much cleaner now. The old editor, instead of using a table to enter information, used spaces--which works, but makes a mess of the html--all these ;ntsb's everywhere. I made a table and now the code looks a lot more readable, and the information is "up to the minute". Our next performances and practices, the where and when, are all loaded on the Upcoming Events page. Even a quick note about our 2008 Ceilidh, and a "Merry Christmas" at the bottom! Although, shouldn't it be Samhain? Whatever. The page looks good, the information is good, and I'm pleased.

The band manager wants a subpage with a login for the band members that has email address links that won't be available to the general public. Nice idea, but I have no idea how to set that up. So I have to speak with my "webpage gurus" to find out how that's done. I can build the form in visual basic, but the code behind it is beyond my understanding, and setting up the html behind that is even MORE beyond my understanding. I mean, I can link the button to the login form, but then once the user enters their information, the html has to know if that information is valid and what rights does that user have? Beyond that...do I even have a webpage guru? I'll have to think on that one.

The coffeemaker is empty and ready for tomorrow's brewing, and it's time for my shower!

Today's Tarot Card is the Sun. This means that the day will be bright and happy and everything will go well, right down to the last second. It means I slept really well last night (I did) and that there will be no problems. Basically, a sail right through it type of day.

I'll let you know, because I don't always trust these cards. HA!