I took it as a sign and ordered new yarn.

So....the Ravellenic games are afoot and yesterday I attempted to work on the 3rd of my three planned Ravellenic Game projects.

Yep, attempted. I seem to mostly "attempt" to work on this project - The Tardis Socks.

This pattern offers me the opportunity to try a little stranded color work and make spiffy socks for the "Whovian" Little Brother.

As previously noted, I started these socks in December 2012. I was at the base of the cuff when I found a knot in the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Yarn. (Not the norm for BMF, in my experience.) 

I just needed a few more yards/rows to get to the color work section so rather than cut out the knot and join yarn in the 1st inch & a half of the sock, I started the cuff over.

(Plot note - this knot is now viewed as Sign #1.)

The sock languished through the months the Little Brother and I were spending at the hospital/pursuing healing because I felt I needed to "sit down" to setup/start my first stranded color work when I had some uninterruptible/focused time. 
(Some of you are making "been there/procrastinated that" noises 'bout now, huh? 
Others of you are snorting "You have cats! There is no such thing as uninterruptible/focused time with cats in the house..." * ) 

And then I chose this WIP for the Ravellenic Games and the rules had a requirement that WIP (Work in Progress) entered in the Games not be worked on after May 15th. 
(Really?!? May 15th until July 27th?!? {sigh} OK.). So I waited. And waited some more - even after the Little Brother moved back to his own apartment and I began to find some uninterruptible/focused* time. But there are always other projects to knit upon...

So, yesterday, I was happily loitering at Kiwi Knitting and I had brought the Tardis Socks to work on during the Sock Club knit-time. 
I pulled out the pattern, figured out what my next step was, pulled out the black yarn to border the "Police Box" letters and....  
(Plot note - this moment is now viewed as Sign #2.)
(Plot confession - I have to take responsibility for not considering this when I bought the black yarn....)
And - I thought "Gee, the black Cascade Heritage Sock Yarn is much thinner than the Blue BMF Arts Yarn." Uh-oh. 

Yeah, I tried knitting with it and the color contrast was great but the Heritage was thinner and I thought the socks might have issues with several inches of color work in a thinner yarn bracketed  by the heavier Socks that Rock yarn. {sigh}

Blessing for the day: I was in a Yarn Store. I had options. 

And I found a couple more options but not both black and white in a wool super wash. 
The Cascade Heritage 150 that was a very good match to the weight of the BMF Yarn I had and, Lynn, the owner of Kiwi Knitting offered to order me the Black and White Cascade Heritage 150 I needed - and she did so. 

(Plot note - the following moment is now viewed as Sign #3.)
'Bout then, I noticed this: 

Did the number of needles in the picture above strike you as odd? 
Yeah, me too. The look on my face must have been interesting. The project had been put/pulled in and out of the project bag for the last hour or so....and that's where I found the needle. 
These were new Knitter's Pride Cubics I purchased last December to try out the "square" needles for the first time and only used to knit the few inches of cuff you see pictured here. 
They didn't travel far as evidenced by my attempts at knitting these socks. 

Moments later, I added up the signs and thought this project is NOT getting done for the Ravellenic games. 
And my eyes went back to the skein of Tardis-worthy blue Cascade Heritage 150 in the sock yarn section of the store. It has more yardage for the Little Brother's bigger feet and there is absolutely no doubt that it will match the Black/White Cascade Lynn is ordering for me. 

And I bought the Blue Cascade Heritage 150, deciding the Blue BMF Arts Yarn would belong to a different project. 

Epilogue/Silver Lining/Another sign?
Epilogue 
The rest of the new Tardis Sock yarn is on order. I've e-mailed the Knitter's Pride folks to see if there are any options to my buying another circular needle to replace the broken one. 

I'm going to pull in this neglected WIP as my 3rd Ravellenic Game project: The "Spacious Show & Tell Moebius Bag" I started in the Cat Bordhi Mobius Class I took last November. I put it aside for Christmas-knitting deadlines and it's been waiting patiently for me to return. 

Silver Lining
When I walked into Kiwi yesterday, literally the first thing I saw was this lovely skein of Manos del Uruguay. I was instantly smitten and it came home with me yesterday (a Cat Bordhi-esque fulled item is plotted for this yarn). 

I'm also thinking the residual Black & White Cascade Heritage 150 yarn might become a pair of Cat Bordhi Zebra Socks. Hmmmmm. 

Another sign?
I must confess...I am still being challenged by the Baby Surprise Jacket. No, with the goodies and clues I found on the Raverly BSJ Wiki page, I've got a pretty good grip on the pattern. But last night I had to rip back pretty much all the knitting I'd done on the jacket earlier in the day. I came up with too many stitches when I was putting the stitch markers back in after knitting the center section for 10 ridges. Near as I can tell - I over-increased. {sigh}

The colors are laying out well, though. 

It could be another sign. A pretty basic message, I think. 
Counting stitches whilst subjected to massive yarn fumes in LYS and surrounded by fascinating  knitterly chat is a lost cause. 

(Please note: Bonus spacing in this blog is a gift from Blogger and 

is not intended for dramatic effect.)

Knitting, uh, mishaps (one cat-assisted)

Usually, when I get a bit full of myself - a little too proud or smug about something I've accomplished or been clever about - that's the time when I am gifted with a profound reality check.

I'm kind of used to it by now and these educational opportunities are generally not a surprise.
When I get that unchecked feeling of being particularly tickled with myself, I know I can expect some follow-up with an instance where I am nearly a perfect ninny - and generally quite publicly.

It does keep me from getting a big head about things.

Ok, the description of this sounds a bit dire, but it's not actually that bad. It's generally funny, very ironic, and I am much better at accepting my foibles and mistakes now than I could when I was a youngling.
I'm trainable.

So...the knitting mishaps that caught my attention...

Technical Difficulties:
During the Cat Bordhi Moebius class, having previously done a fair bit of Moebius knitting, I was smugly whipping through the extended Moebius Cast-on for a "Spacious Show & Tell Moebius Bag" when........ The cable of my circular needle separated itself from the needle (no, not unscrewed, separated)  leaving me with a perplexed look on my face, some dropped Moebius Cast-on stitches, and that sinking "Oh S**t" feeling. 
The irony of the smug-payback was evident. However, I had a backup cable so I replaced the unworthy/failed cable and proceeded to restart my Moebius Bag cast-on with a sigh and a much toned-down "I'm so good" attitude. 

I haven't progressed much past what is shown in this picture.
So many projects, so little time. 

Wait...how many rows?
Whilst doing some laundry, I recently noticed something odd about a pair of socks I finished in January 2011 (the Eight of Diamond Socks (link to my Raverly project page)). I had been rather proud about my knitting socks with an entrelac leg early on in my sock-knitting career. I was laying them out to dry, thinking again that it was kind of spiffy that the foot of the socks nearly match (without any conscious effort on my part).

And then the disparity of the leg length came to the forefront of my mind and I realized I was missing an entire row on one of my sock-legs. Or, it could be that one has an extra row. {sigh/ack!}

Yes, I am entirely boggled that I didn't 

notice the mismatch for a year.  

Another near-match:
I had another moment where I thought I was going to achieve matchy-socks.
Since I started knitting socks, I had maintained that I didn't care if they matched. I was not going to fussy-start/finish or finagle my knitting so I would have matching socks. I didn't care if my socks matched!

And yet, when I'd knit the first of the pair of the Cat Bordhi Purlique socks and had started on the 2nd sock, I was inordinately pleased that the feet of these toe-up socks nearly matched perfectly!

I kept knitting on the 2nd sock, and about the place where I expected to insert the waste yarn for the Green heel....there was only Yellow yarn and no green.

Careful scrutiny seems to indicate that there may have been a break in the yarn just where the green should have started and someone did a truly excellent job of joining the yarn - yellow to yellow. And instead of progressing from yellow to green and then to blue, the colors reversed and headed back to orange then red...

Yep...still no matchy socks for me, as I have declared numerous times. {wry grin}

Gryphon was here:
As mentioned in the last post, I'm knitting the Princess Langwidere Cowl (Rav link) from "What Would Madam Defarge Knit" as I listen to "A Tale of Two Cities" on CraftLit.
(I just started Episode 63 and I suspect I know who will be getting a "close shave" from Madame Guillotine - and it makes me sad for and proud of the character. {sigh}).
I didn't close up my cowl project bag enough last night and when I came back a little later to collect my toys, I found this:

Note - The cowl wasn't out being knit upon - it was in the bag.
The bag just wasn't cinched up tight.
That's right....someone's furry paw had to go bag-diving to find stuff to chew on. 

I'm pretty sure it was Gryphon. In the past, he has demonstrated a wicked-fast ability to separate my projects from the yarn.

(He does that innocent "What?" look reallllly well, doesn't he?)

There's always something to learn and improve upon.
And my lessons appear to be offered in a clear and unmistakable manner, dripping with irony.
S'ok. I'm trainable. ;-)

No, you're in the right place...

The Blog looks different, huh?  What do you think?
I was cleaning up some odd font colorings and adding some charity links and I had a bit of a, well a redecorating fit.

I seriously delved into Blogger's new design options...fell in love with the blue fibre-felted background picture you now see on the blog...and then rebuilt the blog around it.
Blogger's design functionality helped a lot. (Although it didn't have a "apply default" button on some of the  gadgets. Too bad - I had to shift the colors manually - and it's not the same color palate, durn it!)

So - can you guess what my favorite colour is?
I love the sparkly-lights picture I originally found for my Ravatar and I picked the original blog design to compliment those colors.

But they're not the colors that give me a happy-feet thrill. Blues and teal and purples - {happy sigh}. Then forest greens and reds and browns...well, I like most all colors. (Save for baby pink and sickly greens/yellows. {shudder}).

As you can see, I'm keeping the sparkly-lights picture for my Avatars.
But I'm pretty tickled with my new blog format and shading.

So...please bear with me as I tweak the blog in it's new format and my apologies for any older blog-posts that wigged out during the transition to my "blue phase".

What is a Clunky Old PC Monitor Good For?

What is a Clunky Old PC Monitor Good For?
Kitty TV...

(Left to Right: Nikoli, CooPurr, & Gryphon)

Bird watching and enjoying the neighborhood smells...

And for me? General PC-based endeavors (enhanced by fur, purrs, and flicking tails that inevitably block the screen...)

(How much longer do you think it will hold up under the, uh, extra duties?)

Skipping about

I recently realized that I'd been skipping about the edges of topics in the last few blogs and that you-all were getting stray comments instead of plot threads...so here's an attempt to fill in the blanks.


Kitty introductions:
When I said, "The kitty-dynamics are improving - just in the past week, I've only been awakened once or twice with hissing/growling." in the Blog-iversary blog, I was referring to how the Kitty Introductions went when we loosed the orange-tabby brothers from their quarentine in the Computer room.


We started letting Mikale and Nikoli out for supervised visits with Gryphon and CooPurr almost a week after the Saturday when they came to live with us. 

Friday night we let them out for a little bit at a time - there was some general hissing and growling which devolved into sniffing and hissing.

We let them out a little more Saturday until they were loose in the house all of Sunday and Monday and pretty much no hissing. DH told me that Gryphon gave Nikoli kitty-kisses on his head on Monday so I thought we were golden. 

Tuesday, there were minor but LOUD fisticuffs…the big sweetie cats Mikale and CooPurr had some kind of disagreement – of which I missed the specifics.

I did get to see Gryphon streaking down the hallway to jump into the middle of whatever had started and he escalated it. He and Mikale did a couple of laps around the living room yelling at the top of their lungs. Some fur did fly and then Mikale and Nikoli headed for the computer room and I rousted Gryphon (who was now even hissing at CooPurr, just ‘cause) out of the computer room and everyone got a break for a bit. I let everyone out about a half hour/45-minutes later and everyone was fine.  


Things have settled down some. Mikale and CooPurr take turns copping attitude on each other – only sometimes – and generally limited to hissing and the occasional swipe.

Gryphon only gets riled up when everyone else does. He’s been investing time, somewhat successfully, in trying to get Nikoli to play with him. 

The nights of being awakened every couple of hours by someone growling about something seem to be past. (Yep, I'm tempting fate typing that bit...). Everyone is familiar with the squirty bottle concept and they scatter when  I get up and arm myself to diffuse growling fits.  

Blog Stylings:

Back in this bit o'ranting, I made an "announcement" that I was gonna revamp the blog format! 

I did invest a fair bit o'time in playing with the available formats. 

However, I could not find format that made my little blogging heart sing.  

Pretty formats & fun shapes - but they didn't keep things partitioned nicely. 
Too streamlined ("what happened to my stuff??" {stuff = lists to the right of this verbiage}), too pink (ugh/shudder), too many polka-dots, or the color scheme didn't work with the  banner picture I use...yada, yada, yada. 

Hence - the effort was made but I found I still liked my original format best.

(And...yet...now Blogger is tempting me with a "New! Template Designer" feature. 

Well, heck yeah, I'm gonna go play with it! Some time or 'nother... )

Sockiness:

The 5th pair of socks that I made for a friend - she loves them and THEY FIT!! Woo-hoo!!

And the 4 pairs of Socks I'm knitting on now...
Pair #6 - The "Lenore" Socks by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee in Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight  "Raven Clan Corbie" colorway. 

Pair #7 - for my niece-in-law. I bought this yarn for her mom when I heard she was in the hospital. When I didn't get to give  my sister-in-law the yarn, I thought I could make socks for her daughter. 

The "Columbine Peak" Sock pattern by Cat Bordhi from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles in Crystal Palace Panda Superwash Bamboo & Wool.

Pair #8 - The Eight of Diamonds" pattern by our own Purl's Knit Doctor, Tracy, in Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Effekt. 

Interesting sock pattern. 

Entrelac - love it!

I'm glad I did it, but it probably won't be an everyday pattern for me. 

The striping on this sock yarn is quite nifty. I'm thinking about getting one more skein. 

OK, I know the picture above looks a bit bizarre. 

Here's an on-the-foot picture so the sock concept can be more easily applied. 

Sock #9 - this one is all about the yarn. 

Well, not entirely - I am quite tickled with the Dublin Bay pattern I've been wanting to try for a bit. 

But the Flat Feet Hand-painted sock blank that I "rip"/un-knit in order to knit my socks is entirely tooooo fun.


I'll figure out what else I've been skipping and I expect more posts will follow.
For now, I'm off to do some knitting and Nikoli is "supervising" my computer time. 
I didn't see him fly up there, but there he is... 

I guess Junk Mail doesn't taste as good...

I came home tonight to find the DH had brought the mail in from the mail box.
Cool. That was nice.
However, this is the "mail" I found on my desk.

It's kind of my own fault, really.
Earlier today, like 9 hours ago, I had foolishly said to someone at work that Gryphon's chewing habit seemed to have improved.
Sigh.
I know better than to tempt fate that way.
The rest of the mail was perfectly intact.
I guess Junk mail doesn't taste as good as movie-in-envelope.

Excuse me, I have to go tell the Netflix folks that the Cat Ate My Return Envelope.
I suspect this won't be the first time they've heard that excuse.

"It should just work!" and "Where did you say my truck was?"

I'm being petulant.

It should just work.

If I buy a Consumer-Reports super-blessed Security Suite to protect me from the unpleasant aspects of power-tripping jerks on the Internet - it should just work.
If I use the Internet browser at home that is so favored by our company's nifty IT security guys that they expect us to ONLY use that browser at work - it should just work fine at home.

I don't want to have to wait for my PC to get it's first Security Suite update of the day before I can do anything on the computer.
I don't want to have to take breaks or slay the Security Suite because it gets stuck doing an update and sucks up all the CPU. (Yes, the prescribed solution from the Security Suite help-it's-not-working site is "do a hard boot". Nice.).
I don't want to have to un-install and re-install the expensive Security Suite because it has a little bug in the last update so it stopped getting updates and wouldn't let me open the frigging program to run a scan on my PC.

I don't want to have to go through the Security Suite's learning process a 2nd time because I had to reinstall it - and now it doesn't remember on which sites I allow pop ups or that funny program I'm trying to open the Borders coupon link from is my E-MAIL.

I don't want to have to shift to the less blessed and supposedly less secure Internet browser because the latest version of the favored Internet browser did some clever updates so it doesn't play well with Blogger anymore. {grrrr/oy}

I don't want to revamp my blog format because... the nice people who let me blog for free...with all sorts of nifty options..and reporting, and.... yeah, I probably shouldn't be whining about this one.

Minor announcement! I'm revamping my blog format inspired by the latest blog system improvements.

We could use a change! There's a buncha new formats available and so long as I don't used that work-favored Internet browser I can even make some changes to my blog! Wish me luck!

BUT - THE REST OF IT SHOULD JUST WORK! Arrrrrgggghhh.

Ahem.
Ain't technology fun?

~*~

Last night, I was merrily finishing a book and getting started on the 2nd half of my 4th pair of socks, when...

(And yet the 5th pair of socks (made for a friend) was finished a couple of months ago...go figure.)

 

Anyway - I had started on the 2nd sock when the doorbell rang and a gentlemen I'd never seen before asked if I had two white trucks. I cautiously answered yes, wondering if someone wanted to try and buy one again.

(No - not the newer one that's about 5 years old - people ask to buy the 20 year old Isuzu. Again - go figure.)

He asked if that was one of my trucks - pointing down the driveway. I looked 'round the entry way...

And there was my very well-loved little Isuzu sitting sedately in the street, hogging most of the two lanes, with the M&M sun shade keeping out the starlight.

And my intelligent reply to this spectacle?    "Well, that sucks."

I thanked the gentleman for bringing this to my attention mumbling "The emergency break must have let loose." and turned back into the house to get my keys. I heard a slightly disgusted "It's her truck." from behind me and the several cars that had stopped to ponder my sliding parking job began to dissipate.

I grabbed my keys and padded barefoot out to my little truck sitting in the street.

The emergency brake was on. I think it was in 1st gear too. Uh-huh. Lovely.

I re-parked it back up on our sloping driveway, set the Emergency break really hard, turned off the truck and sat in it for a while trying to rock it out of place - it didn't budge.

Inspired by the parking shenanigans, I got up to check a few times through the night to make sure the truck was still in the driveway.

I told the DH about the unsupervised trip the truck took last night and he mentioned something about how maybe the last time he changed out the breaks that he might not have re-tightened the emergency break.

Uh-huh.

(It should Just Work!)

.

PC Improvements - whereby I hamstring my PC fun...

I have pictures to post, blogs to read, ebay perusing to do...however, the security suite I installed seems to object to my knitting-related fun. (oy)
Please pardon the odd short posts I'm going to attempt, I'm fooling with settings after not receiving a response from the Security Suite support whose software was praised by the vaunted CR.
(Ha - like anyone reads this! (s'ok, I talk to myself on a regular basis - this is no different!)

Weirdness. K - I tried (again) to load some pictures. Yesterday, they never loaded, I would just get dumped back to the start-page no errors or explanation.

Today, I get a pop-up error from Blogger "There were errors during upload. The following pages could not be uploaded (photo location string): This image could not be uploaded due to an internal error."
I have been off perusing the Blogger help sites...seems I have to join a group to ask question. Searching various groups showed no matches to this error. AND...I found a comment from 7/6 indicating Blogger was making some change and ability to load photos might be affected.

So - have I been slandering the Security Suite? Is it Blogger that is preventing me from seeing the pictures on one of my Favorite Blogs: Tales from the Den of Chaos? I can't see the progress on the Creatures of the Reef Shawl!! (Ok, the problem started when I realllllly wanted to see the pictures of the blueberry pie in the 7/9 post, but can I? Nooooooo) Hmmm - note the date of the blueberry blog and how it relates to the date of the change on Blogger. Yet, comments on the blog indicate other people can see the pictures...

I have no answers, just weirdness.
I begin to suspect the Security Suite may not entirely be to blame (but I still can't peruse Ebay).