Trifecta

It's cute, it's geeky, and it's knitting.  It's today's 365 pic.



I stopped in at my friend Jen's house and stole her baby, and then felt guilty while she ran around and made dinner.  I was assured that I was an immense help just by being a baby holder.  Not much more done on the scarf in the picture, which is unfortunate, as it's 'due' for a birthday on Friday.  Well, that's not gonna happen. 

Cat Toes and Radios

Today I got a nice big chunk of knitting done.  Not that I have a picture to prove it.  No, knitting pictures come few and far between when it's dark when I leave and dark when I get home. 

But the reason I got lots of knitting done is related to my car stereo.  I have a 2008 Ford Focus, which comes with the nifty new "Sync" system.  I can plug in my iPod and use my voice to select songs, playlists, podcasts all using simple spoken commands.  It really is a nice setup, and great for my frequent 3 hour road trips, preventing me from having to click around to find what I want.

(Now, this is not an exciting story.  I invite you to skim.  Really.  I will share a picture of furry kitty toes to break up the monotony some of the way through here, too.  Promise.)

Sadly, a few weeks ago, I plugged in my little iPod one morning, and ... nothing.  It didn't recognize the little guy, no matter how many times I restarted and unplugged and plugged in again.  I checked my cable, the pins, the iPod.  Nothing seemed to be wrong.  I hopped on the Sync support site and found that some people had solved the problem by downloading and installing the updates available on the site.  So, I got my little geek stick (USB drive), downloaded, and plugged it into the car.  Nothing.  As far as the car was concerned, there was nothing plugged in.

I called the dealership, and dropped the car off one morning.  Came back at the end of the day, after they'd ordered a part, replaced a cable and failed to fix the problem.  They didn't know how.  They said they'd call "the hotline" and get back to me.  Today, a week and a half later, I go in again - I'm told it'll be half an hour, and so I run over during my lunch.  Two hours later - "Um, when can I have my car back please?"  Their laptop is messed up, and they have to call the hotline again to get them to fix the laptop, and then they can recalibrate and reset the system, which will take half an hour.  But they don't know how long until the hotline gets back to them.  So I leave.  They will call me when they can fix it.

We interrupt this boring story for kitty toes:


Carry on.


As I drive to knitting group tonight, I decide to give it another shot with the geek stick.  Nothing.  But I spot a 'Master Reset' in the menu tree, and try that.  After some grumbling and thinking, the system is reset and it now recognizes my iPod and seems to work fine.  I had to redo my phone/bluetooth setup, but voice commands are working fine.

So what I really want to say here is - car companies really shouldn't introduce fancy new features in their cars without making sure their service centres know how to fix said fancy new features.

Sorry for the boring story.  But if I have helped one poor Sync owner, then it's been worth it.  Sniff. 



I'll call the dealership tomorrow and teach them how to fix it.

Go. Now.

Just in case you've somehow managed to be on the internet and not have heard about it, I must direct you to Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. There are not words for how awesome and amazing and funny it is, and you only have until tomorrow to see it free online. You can also buy all three episodes from iTunes, and the DVD will be available later, with all kinds of ooey gooey good extras.



Know that it's Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Filion and singing and supervillians.

Aw - my first commercial blog entry. Sniff. It's a very geeky moment for me.

Let's Learn Our "One New Thing" for Today

I'm reading a series of books right now that has presented to me something I haven't seen in a long time - words I don't know. Now, I thought that I had a decent vocabulary. I am even known for being a bit wordy in some circles. These books have smacked me down.

The books are The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Steven R. Donaldson. I found the first trilogy a bit of a drag in that by the end, I could think of only two or three 'good' things that had happened. The rest of the books were nothing but anguish and pain and heartache. I just finished the first book of the second trilogy, and I'm finding these a bit easier to take. Not that they're all sunshine and light, either, mind. Maybe I'm just innured to the grief at this point.

But these are new words to me, and I like words. I don't really read any non-fiction (if you don't count blogs), so I love it when my novels give me something new to learn. In most cases, when I'm reading along, and come across a word for which I don't know the meaning, I'm most likely to get some idea of definition just through the context, the sentence, the story. But when I kept coming across more and more words that were new, I decided I couldn't just skim along the surface, assuming meanings. So I started to use my bookmark (one of my business cards - I don't meet so many people that I need them all) to jot down each new word and the page on which it's found. I need a bigger bookmark. I ran out of space after just over a hundred pages.

I know that I'm not the only one who likes stuff like this, so I thought I'd share this little list of mine.

For many of these words, I could have guessed at the meaning, but for the purposes of my list, I included each word that I couldn't say for certain that I knew the definition. Here we go:

knaggy - notty; rough; figuratively, rough in temper

incondign - (especially of punishment) inappropriate or disproportionate; be it excessively harsh or lenient.

auto-da-fé - Public announcement of the sentences imposed by the Inquisition.

geas - a solemn injunction, prohibition, or taboo; a moral obligation

gelid - Very cold; icy

coquelicot - the color of the wild poppy; a color nearly red, like orange mixed with scarlet

etiolated -To make weak by stunting the growth or development of

inchoate - In an initial or early stage; incipient. Imperfectly formed or developed

barranca - dry ravine or a steep depression between hills.

analystic - I couldn't find a definition online, but luckily, I wasn't the only one looking. Captain Maybe has delved deep enough to find a rather hilarious quote from the author himself.

It’s an obscure word that literally means, “pertaining to analysis; determining
the basic components”. But to make matters worse, I’ve used the word in an
obscure sense, as a reference to things to heal (by restoring the integrity of
basic components).
In retrospect, that may be a little too much obscurity,
even for me.

Source: Stephen R. Donaldson Official Website

chancrous - of the nature of chancre (gee, thanks).
chancre - classic painless ulcer of syphilis. The chancre forms in the first (primary) stage of syphilis.

sempiternal - having no known beginning and presumably no end (ooh, I like this one)

chryosprastic - An apple-green chalcedony used as a gemstone

roborant - Restoring vigor or strength

catafalque - a decorated platform or framework on which a coffin rests in state during a funeral

Okay, in starting to look up these definitions, I find that I am not alone with these books. As a matter of fact, most of my list already exists - and more, right here. And? When I look up many of these words, the search results bring me to passages from these books.



And just in case you are not fascinated by words and found this extremely boring, I include a sock WIP picture, to prove that I am, in fact, still knitting.

ETA - Strange things were happening with the template today, and I was already kind of unhappy with the way the header invaded the text area. So I've switched to something a bit less interesting, but more functional - for now.

WIP It

It's about time for a goofy, half-done sock picture, I think.



This is my second Christmas knitting project. This is the first sock of Coupling, from Knitty. Sorry for the horrid flash-shot, but it was night time and I was lazy.




I'm knitting this in Cranberry sock yarn from Sunnyside Ellen's Etsy shop. I like the feel of this yarn - nice and soft and kind of smooshy. It's a semi-solid, and I'm not quite sure yet how I feel about the bits and wisps of white that come through here and there. I'm reserving judgement until I see the whole sock, and whether the white bits disrupt the look.



This is a toe-up pattern, written to be knitted on two circulars. I don't have the right size circs, and am too frightened of another minor spending spree to go shopping for them. So I am adapting the pattern to knit it on my trusty dpns. I've never done this kind of thing before, but all seems to be going well so far. I started out making Widdershins at first, but didn't like the chunky look of it, and so ripped back. But I did really like the toe of the Widdershins pattern, so I stuck to that when I restarted using the Coupling pattern. For me, this is wild and uncharted territory. Using different pattern pieces here and there, all willy nilly - bedlam!























My first Christmas project is one for my brother - I'm making the Dark Mark Scarf, from Storm Moon Knits. This is my first illusion knitting project. It's rather addictive - I just want to keep knitting so that I can see the Dark Mark emerge. I was a little concerned that I hadn't used a bright enough green colour, but I asked my brother what he thought (yeah, I suck at keeping some things a secret) and he liked the stealth of it.

The knitting has stalled a bit now that I'm on the middle stretch, which involves no stealth, mystery, or illusion whatsoever. Thank goodness for socks.

Sorry.

I find it both alarming and comforting that the time has come to begin Christmas knitting. Sorry. But, yes, Christmas is in 88 days. Sorry. Yes, I hate me, too, right now.

I have started some Christmas knitting, in the form of a pair of socks and a scarf. Neither of those recipients bother with this blog, so they don't need to be stealth-knit. But first, I've been doing some knitting for me.

For a while, I've been wanting a sleeve that I can slip my laptop into, to protect it from bumps and scratches. So I flipped through the first Barbara Walker Treasury book and looked for something that would be nice and cushy. I decided on the double basketweave, and chose a yarn that was kind of the starting seed of my stash. I fell in love with the colours at the time, but didn't have enough for a big project, and too much for a single small one. It's JJ's wools, bought at Romni Wools, on Queen West.


I did three repeats of the pattern across, some ribbing at the ends, and just knit until it was deep enough when folded in half. While I was knitting, I wasn't too crazy about the stitch pattern, and was always on the verge of ripping it all out. But once it was all finished and seamed and wrapped snugly around the laptop, it turned out to be pretty cute after all. I'm happy with it, at least.


The other ME project is something I've had on my mind since last winter. Once the weather turns cold, I find that every afternoon around three o'clock, my hands start to freeze. The rest of me is fine, and everyone else in the office is fine, too. I don't know if the buliding really does drop a few degrees, or if my blood sugar is taking the mid-afternoon plummet. Either way, cranking my heater seems like overkill. So I made myself these.




These are knit in Bernat Natural Blends Alpaca, using a free downloadable pattern from Tangle.com. They took me just a couple of days - a very satisfying little project. I almost look forward to chilly afternoons now. Almost.

Tonight it's back to the Christmas knitting. It's good to have another pair of socks going.

New Things and New Socks

First off, I just wanted to point out a couple of nifty new-ish things here on the old blog. The top thing there in the sidebar on the right is my 'shared items' from Google Reader. I read quite a few blogs, including some 'making your life easier through geekery'-type things, and I mark a lot of them, meaning to go back and look at them again, and maybe put some things in place. Google Reader does something kind of fun, in that it lets you make this little gadget here, with items you've chosen to share. So these are links to tips and articles that I thought more people might like to know about. People who are unwilling to devote scads of time reading these sorts of things. This makes me feel a little more productive, anyway.

The much more exciting addition is a little farther down there. It's a gadget from Ravelry, showing the progress bars for all my WIPs. (note: if you are blocked from accessing Ravelry because of a firewall or filter, you won't be able to see anything other than the title. I did start a little bit of a ranting little entry on the injustice and lack of trust inherent in such filters, but then came to realise that that's just not such a good idea. Ahem. )

Anyway - I was lucky enough to get one of these when Casey (Ravelry's superhero code monkey) was testing them out and asked for some guinea pigs. It was a very limited offer, so you can't get them now, but I'm sure it will be an option for everyone once Ravelry's all up and running out of beta. Things are growing by leaps and bounds over there, and the little errors and inconsistencies are being thoroughly weeded out. It's great to see the community growing so quickly, and so well. I do worry about how the whole place might change when there are a few thousand more folks, but I hope that things will only get better. They are knitters (and crocheters) after all.

In non-virtual knitting news, I did indeed finish up my stripey, plain 'ol socks and sent them off to a good home. I wasn't entirely happy with them - I always get a bit frustrated when I do not master a new skill straight off. But they are foot-shaped and stripey and cheerful, so I will not worry about slightly off-kilter heels and a too-long foot. Much.

More fun with pictures

Just playing around with a little video site. Enjoy!

Edit: D'oh. Meant to tell you how this came about. This is from Animoto, a site that takes your pictures and music (or music they provide) and puts together a music video-ish movie. A 30 second video is free, and a full-length one costs $3. I learned about this through Photojojo's weekly newsletter, which also told me about a promotion. If you sign up by today, you get credit for a free full length video. You have to sign up through Photojojo's site for the free video, though, so click on through if you're interested.

The Cottage

I am back. Back at work, back in my own bed, on my own couch. And, as promised, (and to prevent further 'boo'-ing - geez, you'd think I had some kind of history of blogging reliability or something. heh.) ready to present a few pictures so that we can all make believe that we are all there, lounging on the Muskoka chairs.

John and I drove up from Toronto, and Charlotte drove down from North Bay, and we somehow managed to meet up at the McDonalds in Gravenhurst at just about the same time, through some miracle. We continued to drive, Char following, through Gravenhurst, noting the locations of grocery store, beer store, and fruit stand as we passed.



We arrived at the cottage, and got the lay of the land from the owners as they downed their wine and ran out the door. (Our kind of people)
(This is Charlotte's picture - I somehow managed to take no shots from the non-lake side of the cottage. )

After choosing our rooms and doing a quick tour of the cottage, we changed into bathing suits and headed down to the dock. Now, I am very physically uncoordinated, and so it should come as no surprise to learn that I am not a swimmer. So it seemed just serendipitous when we were told that the bay - our bay for the next week - was shallow. Shallow enough to walk all the way across. The chances of me dying on this vacation dropped greatly.



The week unfolded without fanfare, and with much nerdiness.

We had no schedule, no tasks. We woke up when we were rested, read so many books we could have stocked a small library. We ate when we were hungry, jumped into the shallow bay when we were too warm.

We spent copious amounts of time reading, moving, sloth-like, from deck chair to couch to muskoka chair. In the early afternoon, when the sun was high in the sky, we'd jump into the bay to cool off, then lay in the sun to dry, then move to lounge in the shade. Meals were prepared by whoever was feeling energetic, and we ate well. Our week started with healthy snacks like veggies and fruit, but had degenerated to chips and dip by the end.



There may have also been some drinking.

Maybe.


Thursday, we designated as 'Town Day', and we ventured into Gravenhurst and Bracebridge, somehow stumbling into used book stores in both towns.



There was some knitting, but no finishing. I have joined in on the Mystery Stole project, but it hasn't really taken off for me, as I'm more used to knitting that I can do while watching tv or talking. The laceweight wool and teeny little beads were particularly poorly suited to knitting by the bay in the Muskoka chairs, so I am still on Chart A. (Fifth time's the charm, right? Cause that's how many times I've restarted. So far.) There was Trivial Pursuit, and some cribbage, and some watching of Torchwood on a laptop. (Stick to Doctor Who. Really.)

The cottage was wonderful, amazing, peaceful, calming, fulfilling, enlightening, rejuvenating, invigorating. I didn't know how much I needed this time to refocus and recharge.

Now I have to go to bed. I didn't have my midafternoon nap on the dock today, and I'm beat. More pics soon - I have to stretch every bit of blog fodder I've got!

Search Web

Highlight/Clear

Reload

The Blogs... They are too much!

I had an initial goal of getting my unread items in Google Reader down to below "100+", so that an actual number would show up there, making me feel like I am making progress, rather than participating in a ridiculous, trivial, Sisyphean task. But it has now been literally hours, both yesterday and today, and I have yet to reach that magical point that will make me feel less like some kind of laptop barnacle.

This has made me realise that I really need to prune back my feeds. What was supposed to be only an amusing and occasional diversion has now become a time-sucking chore in many ways, and that's just not fun. Nor is it fair to not only myself, but also to the people whose blogs I read. I hate the feeling that results from skimming past stories of people's lives, full of triumphs and tragedies, and pictures of their worlds because I just want to get through it.

Cottage update and pictures tomorrow, when the lassitude brought on by warm air and late mornings has started to dissipate. And when I get that number down a bit.

Imprisoned by Canada Post

I feel as though I am trapped. It is now 5 pm, and the new Harry Potter book has yet to arrive. I've been up since 7 this morning, just because I was so excited to know it was the big day. And, I wanted to be all presentable and ready to answer the door at any moment.

That was a long time ago, now.

I can't leave the house. I worry when I go out on the balcony that I won't hear the door. I'm too scared of spoilers to turn on the television. This also limits use of the internet to some degree. I don't want to watch a movie, because I want to start reading the moment I have the book, and I wouldn't want to have to stop mid-movie for something I haven't seen before. So I've been watching some Firefly and sticking to catching up on old blogs. My friend Charlotte got the book at midnight and was finished by 7 am. It is killing her not having anyone with whom she can talk about the book. But she is also a very good friend, and would never spoil.

Thinking of other things...

I visited Windsor last weekend, and stumbled upon a nice (and dangerous) surprise, in the form of a store clearing out all its yarn. 40% off all yarn. I may have gone back a couple of times. I may be thinking of sending my mother back there to take a few more skeins off their hands. Maybe.

I didn't go completely nuts, but I did get some goodies - I'm especially happy about the lovely, tweedy alpacas. I'm thinking hats and mittens.

Not thinking about the book at all.

ETA: The book arrived at 6:50 pm. I now love Canada Post. I almost hugged the poor carrier in relief. I am now 59 pages in. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Another Reveller for Ravelry

I was thoroughly geeked-out and very fan-girl when I got home and opened my email on Monday. I got my Ravelry invite! This thing is as fun and interesting as promised, and my addiction is developing nicely.

I'm loving that this is the organisational tool I never knew I wished I had. I'm having fun going back through old blog entries and picture files. I've done a lot more knitting than I thought I had. And now I get to have all the pictures and pattern and yarn details in one place. And I can see everyone else who knitted that same thing, and how they chose to change it and make it their own. Another favourite feature is the needle inventory. I keep buying the same sizes because - I don't know - I like the number 4.5?

Excuse me while I go add a few more pictures. I highly recommend Ravelry, if you don't mind a waiting list. Look me up. I'll be there a lot.

Music and Yarn

Saturday was May 5th, the day over 23,000 Flickr members chronicled their day and shared it with the world.

My day was a pretty typical Saturday for me. I got up, read in bed for a while, then got up and dyed my hair. Well, that's not usual.

Most of the day was spent with knitting and playing with the laptop. I finished my sock, finally. Thanks in large part to how easily persuaded I was by a comment to take the more direct route. Thanks, experienced sock knitter, kmkat!

I found that I had a hole at the ankle where I joined the heel back in with the front of the sock (I do not know technical terms) and by happy accident, that very day, Erika posted about the same problem. I commented that I had hit the same problem, and that I was thinking I should rip back and fix it.

Meanwhile, back on Saturday... after I finished sock #1, I got sock #2 started, and headed outside. I figured I needed to make my life at least a little more photogenic for this day. Plus, it was a beautiful day out. I headed first to Second Cup for caffeinated sustenance, and then down to the park, to what I am starting to think of as 'my' bench. While I was there, a little chihuahua came and hung out with me for a bit, sitting at my feet and keeping me company through my short-row toe.

It was an interesting way to spend the day, constantly looking for different ways to look at where I was and what I was doing. My favourite pictures from the day are the ones linked above, and the one I chose as the best, and submitted to the Flickr group was this one, which pretty much sums up most of my weekends.

My Life in Pictures

It's become something of a tradition. Every year, I create a slideshow using my favourite pictures from the whole year, January to December.

Here's the offering from 2006. Happy Belated New Year!

I Made It

Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo. And I made it through, successfully - if not thoroughly - posting every day of November.

It's been an interesting time. I'm glad that I signed up for this. It's been a challenge to find something to say, something to comment on every day. And some days I just plain didn't have or take the time to find something meaningful, or pertinent. And I think that that was okay. I know that not many people read this, and that's perfectly fine by me. I appreciate the people who do visit, and like to share and be a part of the larger community of bloggers and knitters and readers, but I like to keep this as a journal of sorts for myself, more than anything. A place to tell stories and show pictures and give me a way to remember the little things in my life - including who I am, who I was, and who I am becoming. Because I know that as much as I can't change many things about myself, I also know that other things are changing all the time.

I like to occasionally click back to a random time and take in the words and pictures the way I would inhale a scent, and try to remember where I was and how I felt the same way the smell of dry, dead leaves evokes autumn and apples and crisp fall air.

I don't think that I will continue to post every day. But I think that I will post more often than I sometimes do.

Fun Fur

I have some blogs that I have in my bloglines feeds that are there just to make me smile. Not even to laugh, or to make me think, but just to give me that moment of silliness that makes the gloomy sky seem a bit brighter.

And every now and then, I hit one that hits me juuuuust right, and makes me laugh out loud. It's not usually the funniest picture, but the one that triggers a giggle for whatever reason.

This is one of those.

Gimme some CANDY!!!

See? Not the funniest picture ever. Maybe not even the funniest picture on Stuff on my Cat today. Maybe it's the expression. Or it could be the beady little Frankenstein eyes. The caption was definitely part of it. Whatever it is, it just made me laugh out loud in my apartment all alone. As pathetic as that may sound.

Another place I check daily just for giggles is Cute Overload. Nothing like piles of fuzzy, furry cute things to coax a smile out of a day of spreadsheet frustration and emails full of capital letters.

I feel like I need to trim my bloglines a little bit. When getting through my list becomes more of a chore than a pleasure, it's no longer a treat. In the meantime, I'll just keep enjoying other people's creativity and pictures and stories.

Maybe it is still a treat.

Be They For Good or For Evil

I have decided that my brother has supernatural powers. Well, he may not. He may, rather, emit some kind of radiation not yet studied or understood by man. I only hope that these powers, or this radiation, is limited in scope as well as by geography, and God help mankind should it ever be harnessed by evil-doers – or should my brother ever develop a desire to go into sales.

What is this power? I have no name for it, and it defies logical description. All I can do to try to explain it to you is to demonstrate to you the effects it has had on my life. And my wallet.
Every major electronic device I have purchased, I purchased while in Windsor. While visiting with my brother. While shopping with my brother. Mp3 player? Windsor Best Buy. Digital camera? Windsor Best Buy. Computer? Windsor PC Outfitters. DVR? Windsor Best Buy. Vonage package? Windsor Best Buy.

And today culminated in a purchase that baffles me. For today, while out 'just looking around', I bought a laptop. I had no intention of purchasing a laptop today. I hoped only to take advantage of my brother's knowledge and advice while I had it, to get a better idea of the kind of computer I should, one day, look for and consider purchasing. Instead, I was taken again to PC Outfitters, just to 'talk' to my brother's friend. This friend offered me a good computer. At a very good price. And the credit card was suddenly swiped and I was suddenly picking up the box and then I was suddenly installing my precious Google toolbar.

I do like this new toy. Without it, right now, on day four of NaBloPoMo, I would have failed to post.

I thank the radiation.