Categories
Miscellaneous Whining

Man, this site needs work!

Neglect, neglect, yadda yadda.

I pulled my blog up to look at some of the widgets for another site I’ll be working on soon, and realized how very out of date this thing is, and not just the posts. For one thing, one of my favorite yarn stores closed last summer, so I have to remove that link. My bio needs an upgrade, and honestly, this whole site needs a facelift.

Sadly, my life these days is way to the busy. Work is swamped, personal time is usually spent on my current freelance project, and any other time leftover I’d rather spend as far away from my laptop as possible. (Seriously, I finished four books last weekend, three of which I’d also started last weekend.)

But soon, I promise, my dear two or three readers. Of course, I also need to upgrade JaneEspenson.com…. *sigh*

Just not enough time, dammit.

And in knitting news, I’ve been scrambling away at scarves, scarves and more scarves–and haven’t taken a pic of a single one, dammit. I suck. Someday that’ll change. I hope.

Until then, a pic. No blog post is complete without a pic.

Lioness

Isn’t she beautiful? I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park two weeks ago with my sister and b-i-l, and this lioness was just hanging out on a crate right next to the observation window of the lion hangout. What a ham!

Categories
Knitting and Crochet Programming

Of Scarves and Drupal Devilry

So I’m knitting again. Woot! I finished a (unfortunately heavy) orange and tag-yarn scarf last week, and now I’m working on two scarves/shawls (stockinette to the end, then drop every third stitch). One is sparkly red yarn (Karabella Stardust) and will be this year’s holiday scarf, and the other is a tweedy Plymouth Encore that I’m going to have to frog and restart, ’cause it’s too wide for only two balls of yarn.

I started up again because work, both my day job and my freelance projects, have been stressing me out, and after several near-meltdowns, I had a “D’oh!” moment and realized that I’d given up more than just something to do with my hands when I stopped knitting–I’d given up an important stress-reliever. I can’t believe I ever forgot how relaxing it is work with my hands and let my mind fly loose. Stupid.

Anyway, in other news, Drupal continues to kick my ass. I spent four hours yesterday trying–and failing–to beat the forums into submission. I still can’t figure out why setting a block exception for “forum” only works for the forum posts and not the other forum pages, and google was no help this time. I picked up another Drupal development book at B&N today, one more advanced and with far more customization examples than my other two books, so hopefully that’ll help, but for today I’m leaving the forums alone and working on some of the other things for the site that I might actually be able to fix. I need to get a few more successes under my belt before I tackle the evil forums again, and not just because my ego needs reinflating. I also need to have something closer to complete by Monday for the client. Yay?

And finally, because posts without pictures are just plain boring, here is a gratuitous photo relating to nothing else in this post. It’s from earlier this week at work, when the sun was setting and the fog was rolling in from two different directions. It was so damned beautiful that night I took about 40 pictures, but IMO this is one of the better ones.

Fog over Brentwood

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

A little late, but…




Lime and Tangerine Fun Fur scarf

Originally uploaded by BronzePolgara

I finally finished (as in, weaved in the ends) the Lime and Tangerine Fun Fur scarf. I finished knitting it over a week ago, but I hate the “finishing” part, so only got to weaving in the ends today. It’s cute and fuzzy and bright, but honestly, I’ve decided I like my pink and orange one better, which I made this week with Bernat Boa in Tweety Bird and Chick (yes, those names are real, but translated means “orange and yellow” and “pink”). (Since I’m posting this directly from Flickr, I can only include one pic at a time, so to see the Boa scarf, go here.)

Mindless scarf knitting, for the win!

Categories
Blogs Knitting and Crochet Pop Culture

Ravelry? Oh yeah, I remember Ravelry!

MandrillI just added my first project to Ravelry since forever–the lime green and tangerine Fun Fur scarf that I should be finishing sometime tonight. (No pics yet.) It’s my first knitted project since I don’t even know when; I’ve been mainlining the crochet lately (although not nearly as obsessively as before the tendonitis incident, sadly).

I still haven’t finished Hailey’s Comet blanket–I paused for too long and can’t remember how I was doing the join, and so far have been too lazy to reverse engineer it–so instead I’ve been working on slouchy puffy hats. I did one in red (too bright!), and one in red and pink variegated with white puffs (my sis didn’t like the way the white puffs looked), and my current wip is subtly variegated purple. (None have been blocked yet, so they’re not DONE done.) But I was missing the needles, and I hadn’t made a scarf in about a year, so, when I got a JoAnn gift card for Christmas, I used it for four balls of Fun Fur specifically for this scarf (turns out it only needs two), plus two balls of Cha Cha? Moda Dea? I can’t remember, a vaguely feathery eyelash yarn in pink and orange; plus two balls of the Patons I’ve been using for the slouchy hats (my friend Suzy coveted my pink cammo hat when I was in NYC, so I plan to make a matching one for her).

ION, I’ve also been reading a lot more, in my attempt to read more books before April 1, 2009 than I did between April 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008 (see my LibraryThing for the lists). I’ve been on a supernatural kick (big surprise) and practically inhaled the Twilight books over Christmas (please don’t judge me), then moved on to Sherrilyn Kenyon (no judging!) and the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris (judge me all you want here, I love these). Unfortunately I’ve been buying too many new books and not reading enough from my TBR shelf, so my current rule is that I can’t read two books in a row from the same series. It’s not working perfectly yet–in fact, I don’t see a single book that I’ve read in the last three quarters that came from the TBR shelf–but hopefully it’ll slow me down before I gobble up the rest of the Sookie books (I’ve only read two so far).

For some reason I’ve been very uninterested in DVDs lately. This is most unlike me and I’m not sure what that’s about, but I really need to put my Netflix on hold until it passes–I’ve been holding onto the same two dvds for about three months now, while still paying the monthly fees. Very bad.

Finally, I have to share this website I found, which I’m probably the last person to learn about: ZenHabits.net. I *heart* it so. It has all kinds of good advice on all kinds of different topics. Check it out!

Oh, and finally finally, here’s a video I took at the L.A. Zoo a couple of weeks ago, of a Koala and her baby. Enjoy!

Egads, a month! I used to be good at this.

Ok, it’s been a month since my last post. I suck. There, I’ve addressed it, and now I’m moving on.

As before, little has been accomplished on the yarnwork front. Oh, except, I have a picture! This is me at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs two weeks ago.

Me @ Garden of the GodsNote that I’m wearing the pink cammo slouchy hat that in my previous post was still waiting to be blocked. It’s not so slouchy in this picture, due to the fact that the wind was FREEZING and my shiny new hat was the only thing protecting my ears from a nasty earache. It did what hats are supposed to do, though, so I was ever so grateful to have it with me. And yes, that’s my Patons soy/wool scarf wrapped ever so tightly around my neck. (Did I mention the FREEZING?)

While I was in Denver, I started yet another slouchy hat, in hot pink; and once again, I went too big and will probably have to frog it, much like the cammo one.  I could’ve sworn I stuck to the final cammo specs, too, given that it’s the same yarn. Phooey. There’s been no progress on the shawl–well, not much, anyway. And I think that’s all I’ve done yarn-wise since my last post. Sadly, I didn’t even get to any of the local Denver yarn shops, even though I had a rental for half the trip. I suck. I did, however, get my hair cut–it’s super cute, even though you can’t tell from this pic (or any of them, for that matter).

My new niece was born a few weeks ago. I was going to give her the log cabin blanket I was working on last summer, but now I’m thinking of starting something new just for her. Oo! Maybe I’ll stop at the yarnstore after PT today! It’s allowed, since most of my stash is made up of natural fibers, which is not good for something that’ll need frequent washings.

That’s it for today–have a marvelous weekend, and try to stay cool!