Category: Blogging/computer

Hotlink Hussy?? I hope not…

There have been several knit bloggers writing about blog etiquette lately.  The latest hot topic has been hotlinking.  This involves putting other bloggers’ photos on your blog, but linking to them from their server so it uses their bandwidth rather than yours.  Expropriating someone else’s photos is at best unintentional theft, but linking to them on their server is bandwidth theft.  This can cost unsuspecting bloggers lots of dollars, apparently.

Kerstin of At My Knits End describes this much more coherently than I can.  Read her post from yesterday to find out more about this.  She has links to several other websites that discuss this as well.

Now, I am not an expert knitter by any means.  But my computer skills make my knitting look it was done by a master knitter.  I have gone through my entire blog site, page by page, and I think I am innocent of most blog crimes (except maybe silly posts and dumb pictures).  If any of you think you have been hotlinked by me, rest assured it was only because I am a computer idiot; let me know and I will fix it.

No knitting progress to report today; tomorrow is Friday for me…and it has cooled off here so knitting doesn’t seem like such a bizarre activity!

Colorstrology!

I want to know why we all seem to love these sites, and who thinks them up. I cannot stay away from the internet quizzes that tell me what kind of person I am. Never mind that I am 40-something, tripping towards 50-something, and should already know what kind of person I am.
This one is from Kerstin. It’s the Pantone Colorstrology site; it tells you what color suits you best based on your birthday; and your personality traits based on that color and birthdate.
I’m October 5th, Winsome Orchid, sparkly, intelligent, and outgoing. Have you ever noticed that none of these sites label you as a witless, unpopular dullard with no sense of appreciation for the finer things in life??
You might notice that the predominant color in my blog banner is winsome orchid. This truly was a fortuitous choice, it appears.
I will be absent from the blog world for a few weeks. We are travelling to Germany to visit friends; and yes, I already have a list of yarn shops printed out for every town in Germany with a population of more than ten people. Our friends do have internet access, but it’s dial-up only, so I may or may not get to post for a while. I’ll probably be way too busy eating strudel and drinking German wine to get on the computer.
Have you noticed how knitters have an extra travel challenge? I have not packed or done laundry, or anything else that I really need to do to get from here to there. I do however have my knitting projects lined up, and have made sure I have enough gadgets and yarn to last me for the whole trip. I’ll be back….

Knitting & Blogging

In the past few days there have been two posts on other knitting blogs that I have found interesting.  One is from confused knitting.  The second was Kerstin’s from April 18th.

I have been thinking about why I knit, and why I want to write about knitting.  Knit blogging is a curious phenomenon to me.  It seems to me that as knitters we want to share our love for our craft with others who enjoy the same thing.

In my mother’s era, women met regularly to do the crafts that they loved.   The knitting or sewing was the initial reason that they got together, but ultimately their homemakers’ groups or craft clubs became a source of friendship and support that would last for years and sometimes decades.  My mother and her friends shared their knowledge of their crafts, but more importantly, shared their lives and all the joys and sorrows that happened along the way.

I think that we miss this type of friendship and connection in our lives.  Most people I know are too busy to have much of a social life outside of their jobs or their children’s activities.  Recently I discovered that an acquaintance of mine is a knitter.  We decided that it would be fun to get together for an evening and share a glass of wine and knit together.  Six or seven emails later, we still haven’t been able to settle on a date.  Between her busy life and mine, there is not one evening in the next month that works for us to get together.  Our lives seem to be dictated by our day planners.

I think that blogging about our craft/art is a way to fill that void.  I have a list of blogs that I read on nearly a daily basis.  I look forward to reading what my “friends” have written today, and to seeing what they are up to now in their knitting lives.  I feel like I know many of these women (and a few men!) quite well from having my morning coffee with them over the past year.

It is reassuring to know that there is someone out there who has the same love for knitting that I do.  I don’t think that it is just the actual knitting that I enjoy, though that is certainly a big part of it.  There is a definite satisfaction in doing something that women and men have been doing for centuries in essentially the same way.  Though we have a much wider array of raw materials to choose from than did earlier generations of knitters, the process hasn’t changed much.  I can easily imagine a knitter many centuries ago sitting with neighbors or family members and knitting an essential garment while gossiping or sharing household tips.  This isn’t much different than the current “stitch and bitch” sessions that our generation seems to think we invented.  And I don’t think it’s too far a leap to compare these long-ago knitters to the online knitting community of today.

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I am still knitting the same stuff.  I think I have decided to use the Interlacements Seeds yarn from my previous post for a sweater.  It keeps staring at me and whispering “sweater”.  So it’s back to shopping for bucket hat yarn.

Friday Five, a day late

1.  What do you do for a living?
I’m a physician specializing in internal medicine.

2. What do you like most about your job?
It is a constant challenge; I learn something significant almost every day.  I’ve not met a patient yet that has read the textbook and follows the “rules”.

3. What do you like least about your job?
Having to think about the financial issues; in the larger sense money does affect patient care.  I just don’t like to think in those terms, or have money concerns factor into my clinical decisions.

4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because…
Someone hasn’t done as well as I expected; the worst is when somebody dies when it was not anticipated.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
Seriously, none.  I love what I do; it tends to be an all-consuming passion.  Independently wealthy is a close second.

A Lesson Learned…

Don’t try to blog when you are dead tired.  It is about as successful as knitting when in the same state, and usually results in doing things over.
I got home late last night…about 11:30.  I work a screwball work week; 7 days on, 7 days off, the week on adds up to about 80-90 hours when things go well and I’m home on time.  It was also a very stressful day, for any number of reasons.  Let’s just say they don’t make up a lot of the stuff on ER….we have things happen in a real-life hospital that would be considered too way out there to make it on network TV.
Anyway, I decided to post, being the dedicated new blogger that I am.  I carefully composed, then in one click hit the button that closed the browser WITHOUT SAVING THE BLASTED THING.  Yes, I know talking in caps is shouting….it’s nothing compared to the swear words coming out of my office last night, followed by the sound of my forehead banging up and down on the desktop.

And I did not get any knitting done, because I decided to use those last relaxing few moments before bed to write.  And I have no recollection of what I was going to write.  And no new knitting to show for my day, as I just got home.  Fortunately some nice man is making me dinner, then I will get to knit in peace and quiet.  Law & Order reruns, here I come.

I posted a forgotten project in the “On the Needles” page.  Now I can’t find the online picture, but the yarn (Schoeller Esslinger Sunshine) was on sale on Elann recently, along with the pattern book.  Now the pattern book seems to be gone from their site.  Looks boring now, but the finished sweater hopefully will be cute.  And warm.  We don’t take spring seriously here in the Pacific Northwest for at least a month or two.

My First Blog Entry!

Well I’ve gone and done it!  I’ve been keeping a non-web “blog” offline for several months now, and figured it was time to publish it online.  I still have to do a bit of tinkering, and I’m not at all sure what all the buttons and options are, but here goes.

I learned to knit briefly as a child (probably 4-H!) then promptly decided it was not a cool thing to do.  I taught myself again about 4 years ago and it has become more of a lifestyle than a hobby.  I’m also a doctor by profession, and to support the yarn habit.   I’m an internal medicine specialist and a hospitalist, meaning I only have a hospital-based practice.

My current main project is a sweater for John, my husband, that I have been working on forever.  It is out of an old book of sweater patterns:  A Close-Knit Family.  The yarn is Classic Elite Provence, in a deep blue and off white.  It’s actually quite nice to knit with, but the pattern is just plain boring.  I keep putting it down to start something else, and finally have promised him that I will finish it next.  Every time I order more yarn I hear “what about my sweater?”.  So it will be finished next.

I have numerous other things in the works, or in the swatch stage, and will figure out how to get pictures up in the next day or 2.

John's Sweater 002

OK, that wasn’t too difficult!