Category: Blogging/computer

Seven Years! Free Yarn!

Happy Blogiversary to me! Seven years ago today I started this blog. I’ve done 548 posts, and had 7626 comments in the past 7 years. I’ve met a bunch of really interesting people through my blog, and “met” a lot more virtually online. You all have stuck with me through silly knitting mistakes, goofy whiskey-related incidents, and one big accident that put me out of commission both for knitting and work for 3 months. You’ve cheered me on during bad work weeks, during a stressful job move, and encouraged me to be a better knitter/spinner, just so I wouldn’t have to show photos of crap here. I think I’ve become a better writer and photographer because of the blog, though I have a lot to learn still about both.

In honor of all of you, I’m having a contest! I have two things from my stash that I’m giving away. Here’s what you’ll play for, if you decide to participate:

The first is a sweater’s worth of Phildar Aviso that’s been aging in the stash long enough. It’s a cotton acrylic blend, and is a true crayon red. It is a heavy worsted weight, and there are 888 yards of it, enough for a short sleeved sweater (or something for a child!). I really like this stuff, but I tend to buy a lot of red yarn, and I have yarn in the stash for at least four more red sweaters.

Lewey approves, but wants to point out that he’s not included. Here’s a photo without the Corgi.

The second prize is two skeins of sock yarn. These are both from Three Irish Girls, and are two from her Sock Yarnista yarn club.

The one on the top is her Finley fingering superwash merino, color Seacoast. The bottom one is Beckon merino, a light sport weight, color Arboretum.

As usual, all yarn from this house comes with plenty of free dog and cat hair, though it mostly is stored out of their reach. There is no smoking allowed in my house, if that’s a concern.

How do you enter to win one of those prizes? Very simple: just comment, one comment per person, and tell me what your favorite knitting pattern is. I want to hear about sweaters, hats, mittens, whatever strikes your fancy. It can be something you’ve knit many times, or something you really want to make but haven’t gotten to yet.

Contest starts as of now, and I’ll pick 2 winners using a random number generator. Let’s say you have until Tuesday night, the 29th, at midnight Pacific time. After that, I’ll choose a winner! Good luck, and thank you all for 7 great years!

Year Of The Blog

I hear by declare this the Year Of The Blog. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ravelry, but one of its major impacts has  been a sharp decline in knit/fiber bloggers and blog posts. I can’t imagine the Internet without Ravelry, BUT. There are some big advantages of active, creative bloggers writing regularly. Having a relatively close group of blog friends is a little like having a small wine party or tea party in your living room, sharing knitting or spinning. Ravelry is more like a huge convention center full of knitters and spinners, all jumbled up and bumping into each other. I have also noted that forum threads tend to degenerate into nasty name-calling much more frequently than you’d ever see on a blog. Most of the Ravelers are very polite, friendly people, mind you, but even the most innocent sounding threads can take a nose-dive to drama in zero-to-sixty seconds flat. Sometimes I can see it coming, sometimes not. It’s a little like watching a car wreck.

Ahem. Anyway. I’m not about to give up Ravelry. But this is the year I’m going to try to blog more, and to try to comment more. There you have it. I don’t promise to blog every day, but I’m going to try to show up here more often.

A couple posts ago I promised you photos of knitting-related acquisitions, and a peek at what I got for Christmas. Here you go.

A Tom Bihn knitting bag! I’m so excited. I’ve wanted one of these forever. I actually bought this for myself with a little Christmas bonus I had. Note Big Pink peeking out. Here’s another look:

Big Pink removed so I don’t give anything away. This has lots of space, is sturdy, and you can customize it with a bunch of little bags that clip to the inside.

And why do you suppose I was shopping on the Tom Bihn website in the first place? Because this is what my sweetie pie got me for Christmas:

It’s a Mac Air! Oh my. I adore this. But I needed a case for it. Ergo Tom Bihn.

It’s perfect. It’s his Ristretto bag, and has a nice padded compartment for the laptop, and plenty of pockets and space for other stuff. I could even stuff a sock in progress in here for travel.

And just so I can show that I really do knit, here’s the dog mittens I mentioned in the prior post. In case you all forgot, I started these eons ago, dragged them out this fall, decided they were too small, and ripped half a mitten out. Here’s where I am.

I’m about half done with the first mitten (again). Just because I always get asked, the pattern is Dog Mittens, by Jorid Linvik. Here’s a Ravelry link, and here’s her pattern shop link.

So, there I go, making New Year’s Resolutions that I said I wasn’t going to do. What plans do you have for your blog this year?

Blogiversary!

And I almost missed it, imagine that. Actually I started a post earlier today. WordPress has been nagging me to upgrade to the newest version for a while now, so I went ahead and clicked the button that said “OK, already, upgrade me and quit bugging me”*. Then I went to the blog to check to make sure everything happened like it should, and on first glance, it did. Then I noticed that all the little things that you click on,  like the words that should tell you to “comment here” were in German. Um, right. Turns out there’s also a new version of the theme that I use, which is by a German web designer. It ended up taking me the better part of a beautiful spring day to get it fixed. By that time I was done blogging.

Now I’m back, and no longer in a blog-induced snit. I think I’ve fixed stuff, but if you notice weirdness, let me know.

Six years. That’s how long I’ve been doing the knit-blog thing. I started a knitting journal on the computer several months prior to that, then just decided one day to do it. I have to say it’s been a nearly life-transforming experience. I’ve learned so much about knitting, about “computering”, and about writing. I’ve met some incredible people, both in real life and “imaginary”. I’ve shared food stories, travel stories, and just stories about life in general. You’ve all learned about my foibles, my inability to drink and knit at the same time, and about my inability to walk and drink at the same time. You’ve all perhaps perceived that I’m one of the slowest knitters on the planet, but that I make it up in enthusiasm for each new project.

I haven’t been posting much over the past year, but it’s been a challenging year of transition in many ways. Most of it is work-related, which I can’t really write about here. That has gotten immeasurably better with the new job, though it’s been a process getting there. I hope you will all stick with me, since I have no intention of giving up the blog just yet. I have a bunch of stuff to show you, both spun and knitted, so hang in there! Thanks for reading, commenting, and being friends!

*Well, it really didn’t say that, but you know what I mean.

Project Update

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so here goes with where I am with the knitting and spinning. I dragged everything out this morning to take photos of it.

But first, a few housekeeping chores. I’ve been getting hit with a lot of spam on some older posts and photos since I moved the blog. I’ve installed an anti-spam plugin, and we’ll see how that goes. I may close comments on posts past a certain vintage if it keeps up. I really don’t want to go to moderated comments, as it won’t fix the problem. WordPress marks the vast majority of them as spam so they don’t hit my email inbox, but I still have to go through them to make sure they are real spam, and not a real knitter who happened to fall into the net. As a hint, if you use the name of a prescription drug in your comment, or if you talk about certain male physiological processes, it will be likely marked as spam. I do scan through them to catch the real comments, but I might miss some. If you’ve commented and it doesn’t show up, don’t take it personally. Come back and try again, or email me directly (link over in the sidebar).

I haven’t given a recent progress report on the state of moving the blog. I’m still happy with that choice, despite the spam. For those of you thinking of making a switch, I’d highly recommend WordPress. I have about half of the older posts updated with the new photo locations, as well as tidying up the few individual posts that didn’t transfer over correctly. I’m fixing most of the internal links back to my own blog posts, but leaving everything else as it was. On a few posts, not all of the comments made it over, but I can live with that.

Here’s a photo that I found in my email yesterday.

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Apparently John took this with his cell phone one night last week after dinner. Monday was my last day in my old job, and it was another of those fabulous eighty hour weeks that I’m so fond of. This is mostly what I look like at the end of the day, whether I’ve had wine or not. Sleep, eat, work, that’s pretty much it for the week. I have no idea how long I was like that, he finally woke me up and told me to go to bed.

I start my new practice in November, so I do have a couple of weeks to regroup in between now and then. I’ll be at the same hospital, which is a good thing, but also will be able to do a little outpatient work as well. I was in private practice as an internist for about a dozen years before I left that to be a hospitalist, and I’ve done hospitalist work for over a dozen years, so this should be interesting going back to the office. The internists in the new practice do primarily consultative internal medicine for the other doctors in the group, rather than carrying a panel of their own primary care patients, so that I know how to do. About a third of my time will be in the office. Yes, I’m a bit nervous about that, since I haven’t done it in awhile. The real upside will be that I’ll be working generally a forty hour week. I won’t get the big blocks of time off that I’ve had in the last several years, but I also won’t have those work marathons that turn me into such a sparkling dinnertime conversationalist.

On to the projects. You thought I’d gotten sidetracked and forgotten, hadn’t you?

First up, True Blue. This is the sweater that I’m making for John. It’s a plain crew neck pullover, and this is the second sleeve. I have all the other parts done, and am just a few rows from the armhole decreases. I have to finish this soon, as I need to have needles at the ready to start the Faery Ring KAL that Jennifer and I are doing starting November 1st.

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I’m knitting this in Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn; the color is Lake Josephine.

Next up is lace. I haven’t shown this in awhile, because I hadn’t worked on it in awhile. I set this aside to finish knitting the big baby blanket, but recently pulled it out and figured out where I am. This is the Froot Loops wrap, actually Morning Glory, by Anne Hansen.

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As usual, photos of unblocked lace look like crap. Have faith. This will turn into a beautiful swan someday.

Last but not least are socks. I have two pairs on the needles, both plain-vanilla socks, in anything but plain-vanilla colors.

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That’s Shalimar Zoe Sock yarn, in Peony. I’ve finished one sock and am partway to the heel on the second.

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And that’s Wollmeise sock yarn, in Lowenzahn. I started those on my beloved Ivore needles so I would have an airplane-appropriate project for the recent trip. While the Signature double points are lovely, I am pretty sure they wouldn’t make it past airport security. These will be in a holding pattern until I finish the Peony socks.

And that’s it. I’m saving the spinning updates for another day.

Free Yarn!

Now that ought to get everybody’s attention! First, though, thanks to everyone who sent fine birthday wishes, and also for putting up with the endless travelogue in the past few weeks. We made it home safely, though I’m still not quite recovered from the time changes. Even the switch to and from daylight savings time messes with my head, so an eight-hour change is really doing it to me. I’ve been waking up at 4 AM, which wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m a zombie again by about 6 PM.

I just downloaded all the photos off my camera this morning (after I woke up at 4 AM in the middle of a Halloween-slasher kind of nightmare). There are over 700 of them, and all I can say is thank God for digital. John has his own camera, and I suspect an equal number of photos. He’s in charge of photo selection and album content, and once he gets them weeded down to a reasonable number, I’ll provide a link to the online version for anybody who hasn’t seen enough already. I might post one or two here and there, just because I can.

OK, here are a couple before I get down to the business you are all really interested in.

One last Guinness:

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We found this building in Kinsale. Read the sign over the door. I might need to join after 16 days of Guinness, wine, and Irish whiskey. Click to make it big enough to read.

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Here’s that sweater that several of you asked about. As we rounded Slea Head on the Dingle peninsula, we had to make a stop for the “facilities”, and found a nice craft shop. A lot of the “craft” shops in Ireland are full of cheap trinkets, what I like to call “rubber tomahawk” shops, but some are quite nice. They had some lovely Aran sweaters that were labelled as hand knit, and were pretty inexpensive if they really were handmade. I couldn’t resist. John thought it was pretty hilarious buying a wool sweater when I’m a knitter, but I was cold, hadn’t found any yarn as of yet, and there it was.

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It’s quite warm, too. I more or less wore it for the rest of the trip.

OK, now the moment you’ve been waiting for, the free yarn. I found this in a craft shop in Leenane, which I blogged about while we were on vacation.

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As the label says, it’s Aran weight tweed, 100% Donegal wool, in a lovely blue color with little tweedy speckles. There is no weight or yardage listed on the labels, but it’s all one dyelot, and each weighs 50 grams. This would be enough for a hat, and perhaps hand warmers as well. It’s labelled as “A Green Product”, and “Natural Feeling”, which I find amusing. Once again, click to embiggen and get a better view of that electric blue.

One of my lucky readers will win this yarn, along with perhaps a tiny surprise or two. This is simply shameless promotion on my part. Since I moved the blog, my RSS subscribers have dropped from over 700 to 38. The competitor in me finds this a bit demoralizing, so one of the purposes of this contest will be to get you to subscribe. Just hit that button over there that says “subscribe”, pick your blog reader, and Bob’s your uncle. Of course, I won’t really know which ones of you are subscribing, so here’s how you can get a chance to enter the contest. Leave me a comment on this post, telling me about your absolute favorite place to travel. If you don’t have one, tell me where you’d like to go, if time and money were no object. I’ll let the random number generator pick a lucky winner. The deadline will be, oh, let’s say Thursday, the 15th, at midnight my time. Good luck!

Playing With Photos

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One of the WordPress features that I’ve discovered is that you can upload a thumbnail of a photo, but when you click on it, it opens a bigger photo in a new browser tab. Go ahead, click on that and see what happens.

Do you recognize that man? That’s my sweet husband, many many years ago when he was in Vietnam. He found an old box of slides from that era, and I convinced him to get them transferred to digital format. I have to say, he took some great photos while he was there. I’m trying to convince him to start a blog of his own, so I won’t post them all here, but here’s one more of my handsome soldier boy.

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The Move, For Those of You Thinking About It

I know there is a lot of angst in the knitter-blogger world this weekend, at least if you are a Typepad user. It seems that I’m not the only one that hit that wall going ninety miles an hour yesterday. I don’t make decisions lightly, but once I’ve made up my mind, I tend to head forward full steam without a look back. This was no different. From glimmer of idea to “maybe I should go to the bookstore and get a WordPress For Dummies book”, to registering the name and moving the major part of the posts, it was done within a few hours yesterday.

For those of you thinking of doing the same thing, it’s not as difficult as I thought it might be. Moving is definitely a pain in the ass, but this one is going relatively well. Here are my beginning findings, for those of you dithering about it.

Get your domain name registered, now. If you sign up with a hosting service, it’s often free, but even if you’re not ready to sign up, it’s generally under $10 to do so, and it saves the spot. “knittingdoctor.com” was already taken (it takes you to a Lion Brand page! What’s up with that? They’re not doctors!), but “theknittingdoctor.com” was available. If all else fails, pick something close, perhaps with a number. Though that esthetically makes me itchy, it’s just the domain name, not the name you actually give the blog. Go here to find out if your heart’s desire is still available.

Find yourself a blog host. Before you do this, pick your software. This was a no-brainer for me. I just decided without a lot of consideration that I’d do a self-hosted WordPress blog, meaning you sign up with a host site to have server space to put the whole thing, then install WordPress as the actual blogging software. The WordPress site has several suggestions, and I went with Bluehost. They have way more capabilities than I’ll ever use, but it’s relatively cheap (cheaper than Typepad, people!) and has enough storage space and bandwidth than a sporadic knitter-blogger will ever need.

The actual sign up was easy. You fill out a few boxes, give Bluehost your credit card number, download the WP software and install, and you’re ready to blog. I just used a ready-made template from their website, though I shifted around stuff on the sidebar. Importing old posts from Typepad was a bit interesting. First you go to Typepad and sign in, and in your settings pages there is a page to export everything. It sends it to a separate webpage, which you then import relatively easily from the “Tools” section of WP. The only problem is that it is a big enough file that it won’t import it all at once. It imports a bunch of posts, then gives you a “fatal error” message. Just keep importing the same file over and over till it’s done. WP is smart enough to not import the same post twice, so it just skips the ones you’ve already imported and moves on to the next part.

The links came along with the import, for the most part. So did the photos, though they are still linked to the TP server. As I have no intention of paying TP forever just to store my blog photos, I’ll move them eventually, but it will be easier, since I can go to each individual post and see what the photos are. It should be a simple matter, albeit a tedious one, of saving them to a folder on my desktop one at a time, then uploading them back into the correct post from the Bluehost server.

I still haven’t figured out all the whistles and bells. And I haven’t figured out how to get my second page, “Finished Projects” to look right. If any of you WP users out there know how to import a whack of posts into a second page of a WP blog, let me know. I’d appreciate it. Maybe I do need that WP For Dummies book, after all. However, I’m far from a computer genius, so if I can do this, so can you.

I’m off to look around under the hood some more. Have a good rest-of-the-holiday-weekend!

Free Yarn!

No this isn’t an April Fool’s Joke. Once again, I’ve missed my Blogiversary by several days. March 26th, 2004 was my first blog entry. It’s been a crazy fun five years, and I’ve learned a lot about knitting and blogging. I’ve also met a lot of really wonderful people by starting a blog. Who’d have thought?

In honor of the five-year anniversary, I’m having a contest. All you need to do is leave a comment, telling me about your favorite knitting gadget or tool. You know how I love gadgets. Your gadget can be something that’s made especially for knitters, or it could be something from the Muggle world that you’ve adapted to knitting. It doesn’t have to be something that I don’t already have, though that would delight me to no end and give me something new for which to shop. My definition of “gadget” is rather broad: it means anything that you use in your knitting that is not actually the yarn.

Prizes? Of course there will be prizes. I just haven’t picked them out yet. I’ll choose two winners. The first will be by the random number generator, the second will be for the gadget comment that amuses me the most. The two winners will each get their choice of something from my vast stash. It will be a choice of sock yarn or something lacy with enough yardage to make a scarf. (No, you can’t have my Wollmeise. I’m not totally nuts.) Once we have winners, I’ll post photos of a couple of fine yarn selections and let each of them choose. The random number winner will get to pick first, then the amusing winner, just to avoid fights.

I’ll post a photo of my favorite gadget just to get things started. You’ve all seen this before. It’s my treasured drug-dealer’s scale. Every time I post a photo of this I get questions about where I got it. You can buy it here if you want one of your very own. You can’t have mine, it’s not one of the contest prizes.

You have through the weekend to leave me a comment. I’ll close the contest Sunday night, April 5th, at midnight Pacific time. May the best gadget win!

Behinder and Behinder…

That’s what I usually am. I am always about 6 or 8 projects behind, whether it’s knitting, blogging, or cleaning my office. Oh well. You’d think I’d get used to it. If you’re in my family, you know me as the relative that buys “belated” cards on purpose, knowing that they will never get out on time.

Memes and internet games are no different. This will be a dual post, to do two different ones that I’ve been saving up (that’s the ticket, I was saving them up for a special post).

First is a very nice “I Love Your Blog” award, given to me by Miss T quite some time back. That was very sweet of her, and I’ve been remiss in thanking her publicly, and in posting my own choices. I of course love Miss T’s blog, and especially her lovely cooking posts with gorgeous photos. Here are the rules, and a few of my faves:

The rules:

1. Please mention the award on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. You must nominate at least 4 fellow bloggers for this award.
4. Add links to the recipients.
5. Leave a comment so the recipients know they have received an award.

Here are my four. Oh my, how to pick just four from all the talented bloggers that I regularly read?

Part Two: The 6 Random things meme; I was blackmailed challenged to do this one by Jocele of Knitting on Call. Here are the rules for this one:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Randomness, in no particular order:

1. I am sort of a procrastinator. Can’t you tell? 🙂

2. I still wear my high school class ring sometimes. The town I grew up in is small, and has only one high school. The ring design is the same that it’s been for decades. Oh OK, here’s a photo.

3. I also still know all the words to my high school “fight” song. Prove it, you say?

Edgeley High School, hats off to thee!

To our colors, true we will ever be

Firm and strong, united are we!

Rah! Rah! To Edgeley High

You Rah Rah Rah!

Hats off to Edgeley High!

4. I sleep with a teddy bear, you’ve all met her, Sweetpea. What you might not know is that this isn’t a lifelong thing. She joined the family only about fifteen years ago. She’s my first ever teddy.

5. My current hair color isn’t natural. (Shhhhh!) Though it’s actually pretty close to the color I was born with, my hair turned a plain very dark brown as a child. Then the grey started creeping in. I’m not ready for that, so now I’m back to a warm dark brown with a little red in it.

6. The last random thing is that parts of this post got eaten by Typepad, where my blog usually lived. I’m not going to try to fix it. There you go.

Project Update

I’ve come up with a new way to handle all my yarn stash. I created an Access database file a long time ago, before I got a Mac, but there is no good Mac equivalent of that software that is cheap and easy to use. I finally found one, and if you’re a Mac user, you might want to check out Bento. I was able to import the old Access file info, then I just had to update the thing, and add all the tons of new yarn I’ve added to the stash in the last year and a half since I got my Mac. I just love this software; it’s so easy that you don’t need any database experience to figure it out, and at $49, it meets the criteria of cheap. They have a downloadable demo so you can try it out. The only catch is that you must have the Leopard operating system installed on your Mac to use it.

The really nice part of all this organization is that I have one database field for yarn location, so I can figure out where something is without tearing apart the whole yarn closet to find what I’m looking for. I can sort by any field, which means that if I have a pattern for a lace shawl that uses 1200 yards of laceweight, I can figure out what I have in the stash that works. I also did a little reorganization this past week, as the various box contents are a bit random, and are in order of yarn vintage as much as anything else. I now have all the sock yarns in one place, and all the lace yarn in another place. And I’ve decided to start my own sock of the month club. Every time I get the urge to yarn shop, I’m just turning around and opening a box, and pulling something out that catches my eye. I brought all the sock yarn upstairs to sit right behind me, so I’m not tempted to buy any more.

Hey, it could work.

Here are the various current projects.

I’m not taking a photo of Cobblestone. I’ve done exactly two rows on it in the last two weeks. I need to line up some good movies and just sit down and work on this one.

Here’s my new lace project.

This is going to be a triangular lace shawl, using the Evelyn Clark Knitting Lace Triangles book. So far I think I’m going to use this particular motif for the whole body of the shawl, with a ripple pattern for the border, then an edging. Her book is simple, but brilliant.

The yarn is Alpaca With A Twist Fino, in cream. It’s an alpaca/silk blend, and is just heavenly soft, and whisper light.

Next up is the current sock. This is the Madeline Tosh yarn, in Amaranth. I’ve finished one, and near the heel on the second.

Notice anything odd about those stripes? Here’s a better photo to show you:

What the bloody hell? Yes, I’ve counted and measured. I have the same number of stitches on the needles, the same gauge, and the same size needles. Now I could understand this if this yarn came in smaller skeins, with one separate skein for each sock. But this was one skein, which I split in half to make things easier in trying to calculate how long I could make the cuff. These socks aren’t fraternal; I’m not even sure they’re related. For what it’s worth, I’m liking the second sock better.

Last but not least, I’ve resurrected the Sock Hop yarn from last fall. Remember the ball of sock yarn that I apparently misplaced somewhere between here and Idaho? I finally unravelled the first sock, figuring that after all this time, if I haven’t found the yarn, it’s lost forever.  Here’s its new incarnation:

That’s going to be a jaunty little beret. The pattern calls for one skein of Koigu, so I figure this should be enough. So far, I’m loving the way this yarn stripes.

And finally, my gadget of the week photo. I saw these on a couple of other blogs, and had to get one (of course!).

This is a knitting abacus bracelet, by Hide and Sheep. I figured this might be one of those gadgets that looks nice but never gets used. Not so. I really like the simplicity of how this works, and it’s much prettier than my office supply store clicker counter. I also got some of the stitch markers, which are lovely as well. They make a wide variety of marker styles, including markers for crocheters. Check it out!

Help!

This is an interlude in my knit blogging to send you off to help a worthwhile cause. Lisa, AKA Black Sheep, is walking in the Step Out to Fight Diabetes fundraiser later this week.

As a doctor, I can’t pass this one up. John has a daughter-in-law with gestational diabetes, and his grandson carries the gene for diabetes. This is a big one, people, and affects 21 million people in this country alone. You would be helping out a lot of nice folks, many of them your family members and fellow knitters, by sending money.

Every bit helps, so even if you can only send a little, please do so. This horrid disease affects all of us in one way or another. Thanks a bunch!

And The Winner Is…

Actually, “winners”. First off, thank you all for the lovely mailbox full of comments. Now I know how to get the lurkers out of the shadows; give away free yarn! There are a lot of great knitting tips in those comments from my last post, some I already know and use, some I once knew and had forgotten, and many new ideas. If you have a minute or ten, go back and read all the comments.

So then, how to pick a winner? As you recall, one prize, the Opal sock yarn, and the Cherry Tree Hill Alpaca Glitter, was to be chosen randomly. Whew, no decision making there. Using the handy-dandy Random Number Generator, Kathy is the winner of this lovely little pile of yarn. Here’s her tip:

“Let’s see…favorite knitting tip for me is keeping track of which circular needle to knit from when knitting with two circs. I take the working end and give it a tug. The correct end will jiggle, letting me know which one to knit with. Makes it easy to figure out which is which :-)”

The other prize is for my favorite tip of the bunch. Now that one was not so easy. In the end, I picked Bridget’s tip, on not drinking and knitting at the same time. How could I not choose that one, even if she didn’t think it was a valid knitting tip?

“I have no actual knitting tips, though I wish I did. I have learned though, that at least for me, one glass of wine is plenty, if I don’t want to rip it all out the next day. Hardly a tip, but it does work!”

Bridget gets the Heritage lace yarn and the Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Given my past history with the bourbon-related mishaps, I’m surprised that more of you didn’t suggest this.*

Thanks for playing, everyone! Not only did I get lots of great tips, but I got leads to a bunch of new-to-me blogs.

Next post, actual finished knitting projects!

*Of course, just because I liked her knitting idea the best, doesn’t mean that I’ll follow her advice. 😉

Blogiversary!

Bread!

Baby!

Free Yarn!

OK, if those titles don’t get you to read on, nothing will. First, the bread. I promised in the last post that there would be another Daily Bread installment soon. Here it is.

Getting ready:

And just out of the oven:

The recipe is Rustic Potato Loaves, from Baking With Julia. As the recipe is in a published book, and I pretty much made it as written, I won’t write it out here. A reader (if it was you, let me know, I lost track of who recommended this book) suggested this one, so I got the book out of the library. It’s a great cookbook, and I’ve been drooling over it for the past few weeks. I came home from work one night this past week, and there was a package on the counter. My sweetie had bought me my very own copy!

The recipe uses russet potatoes, flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil. The skins are left on the potatoes after you boil them, so add a very nice flavor and texture to the bread. I made this one with my KitchenAid mixer instead of the bread machine, as it’s a very soft dough and I wanted to have a little more control over putting it together. It turned out great. Here’s the meal it went with:

Baked potato, the bread, steamed green beans, and perfect little steaks with a mushroom-red wine sauce. Yum.

Next up, the Baby! Baby Riley (my great-niece!) was born late last week, and is clearly in the running for Cutest Baby Ever Born. She has all the earmarks of a princess-in-training. Here’s a photo:

She looks like she might have red hair, like her grandma, my sister. Her birthday present isn’t quite done yet, but that’s OK. It’s turning out to be a size that she won’t be able to wear for awhile.

Now, the Blogiversary. Three years ago this week, I started my blog. In the words of one of my favorite bluegrass artists*, “what a long, strange trip it’s been”! I’ve learned a ton of new knitting tricks from all of you, been led to a lot of great new yarn-buying shops both online and off, and met lots of new friends through this blog. Though my posting has slowed down lately, I have no intention of giving up the blog. I started this mostly to keep track of my knitting projects, but it’s turned into much more than that. Despite the fact that my husband calls you all my “imaginary friends”, I can’t imagine a week without you all here.

In honor of all my “imaginary friends”, as without you there would be no blog, I’m having a contest. I’m giving away yarn! All you have to do is leave a comment with your favorite knitting trick. It can be a fancy way to do seams, a great gadget that you couldn’t live without, a favorite pattern stitch, or just some wonderful secret trick that’s saved your knitting butt.

I’ll choose my personal favorite for one prize, and draw a random name for the other. The contest will be open for 4 days. The last eligible comment will have to be in by Sunday night at midnight. On Monday, I’ll announce the winners.

Oh, and the prizes? Yarn, of course. Two skeins each, for each lucky winner.

For the knitting trick that is my favorite:

And:

The first skein is Heritage lace yarn, in a heavy laceweight. The color is Blueberry Hill, and it’s a silk-rayon blend, 525 yards. The second skein is Mountain Colors Bearfoot, in Bitterroot Rainbow, enough to make a pair of socks.

For the randomly drawn winner:

And:

The first is of course Opal sock yarn, in Lollipop, from my treasured Opal stash. The second is Cherry Tree Hill  Glitter Alpaca yarn. The color is Northern Lights, and there’s 428 yards of it. I could see this as very luxurious socks, or perhaps a scarf, mittens, or a hat.

So spread the word, leave a comment, win some yarn!

*He is too a bluegrass artist. Check this out if you don’t believe me.

Me, Weird?

I was tagged awhile ago by Jane for the “Six Weird Things About Me” meme. My first thought was, only six? But here goes.

1. I sleep with a teddybear named Sweetpea. She also travels with me when we go on vacation. She will only fly coach and up, never in cargo. She far prefers Princess class, as do I.

2. My family refers to me as the Queen. It’s taken me years to indoctrinate them in this practice. I secretly think they are only humoring me, or worse, mocking me. Every once in awhile one of them slips and calls me a Princess. I remind them, gently, that even a Princess has to answer to someone, and that would be the Queen.

3. I have a split personality. At work I am extraordinarily, compulsively obsessive-compulsive. (If your doctor has to be neurotic, obsessive-compulsiveness is a good neurosis to choose. My other neurosis is obsessive hand-washing, another fine choice for a doctor.) At home however, my organizational skills could best be described as slobbishness.

4. I am a world class klutz. We routinely clean coffee spills off carpets and walls around here. One might recall the walking and drinking episode. My second best, not involving any blood or surgery, was when I set my coffee go-cup on the roof of the car while I was getting stuff out to go to work. When I bent over, the coffee cup tipped over, dumping coffee down the back of my nice white doctor’s coat. It was entertaining explaining to the dry cleaners how I managed to dump coffee down my back.

5. I have a phobia about basements. Specifically, I am terrified of darkish basements with lots of exposed pipes and wiring in the ceiling. Give me bugs and dismembered body parts anytime. Water pipes in the ceiling? They reduce me to a whimpering wreck.

6. I hate talking on the phone. I think this is because I talk on the phone all day long at work. When the phone rings at home, my husband gets the “don’t you dare hand that phone to me” look from me.

I’m not tagging anyone, as I’m pretty sure everyone else in the blog world has done this. If you haven’t, have at it.

I hope everyone’s Christmas was lovely. Ours was, though it’s not quite over yet. We’re flying to Arizona to visit my sisters next week, and we’ll have another Christmas there. My family has always celebrated the holiday on whatever day we happen to be together, rather than be stuck to a specific date. I say, bring on the presents, no matter what the calendar says!

Here’s to a Happy New Year to all! Good knitting, and lots of yarn for everyone.