One Crazy Fiber Lady

At 8:09am this is not a good sign…

Stay cool!

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A happy holiday to all those celebrating today. We are having a perfect day. My sister is here with her two little ones who are entertaining my pair. Dad pitched the pup tent in the backyard for their amusement.

Craft on!

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As I approach the end of my two year contract with AT&T, naturally I’m considering the next cellphone.  Do I get the new iPhone 4 or do I try something else?  While I love my iPhone and will keep this 3g around at the end of the contract and use it like a iPod Touch (handy for handing to a bored kid), I’m not sure if I want to replace it with the new iPhone.  I’m not that much of a fangirl that I HAVE to replace the old iPhone with a new one.  Yes it has been a fave tech toy since I bought it almost two years ago.

What am I considering?  The Motorola Droid X.

I read an excellent review of it here.  As a developer, this phone has two advantages for me over the iPhone:

1. Apps are written in Java – which as a C# developer I pretty much already know as opposed to Objective-C which has some similarities but is far more different and is a far bigger learning curve.  While learning yet another language is not a bad thing, I could be up and developing Android apps far faster.
2. The distribution of Droid apps is an open market – not closed like Apple.   I don’t believe I would have to pay $100 to even get the SDK let alone distribute any application I do happen to eventually turn out.
3. Since the language is Java, I could develop apps either on my Macs or a PC, depending on how the mood was flowing and which computer I actually felt like carrying around.  With the iPhone, I was locked into a Mac.  Now this is not necessarily a bad thing as I do heart my Macs, but my netbook is far lighter to schlep carry than my MacBook.

That’s the short list.  I’m sure, given enough time, I can come up with a few more reasons.  On the other hand, I’ve invested a bunch in iPhone apps.  Fortunately, that won’t go to waste as I’m still holding onto the 3G and I’ve got the beloved iPad that can take advantage of all. 

Anyone have an android phone and can offer up advice either way?  I have some time to do further research as my contract ends in early August and the X ships finally in mid-July.  I don’t want to be paying early termination like I did when I made the jump from Sprint to AT&T (though it was worth it for the iPhone).  I wonder if I could get a temporary number from Verizon and then port the old number from AT&T when that contract ends… hmmmm. 

Oh and since the iOS4 update, my battery indicator is flaky.  Unless I reboot the phone, the indicator is pretty much stuck.  Awesome.  Hope that patch fix is soon.

Wait, what is that you’re saying?  This is a crafty blog?  Hmm.  I better show some crafty pictures then post haste!  Would a picture of two different crafts make up for the geektalk above? 

The sock is the Roundabout Socks (rav).  I finished the first one on Saturday and started the second yesterday during my morning commute.  The yarn is mmMalabrigo Sock in Stonechat colorway.

The spinning is ITW Merino-Silk in the Autumn in Burgundy colorway.  I’ve moved to the high speed whorl and bobbins on my Matchless.  I’m going to two ply this stuff and hopefully get enough yardage for a decent lace project.

Okay, that’s all for today.

Craft on!

…{tap} {tap}.. is this thing on?

For someone unknown and unexplainable reason, I’m trying out Windows Live Writer to post.  I know.  Seriously crazy!  What with my undying devotion to my Apple products, not to mention my perfectly good admin interface in Wordpress. 

But there it was, suggestion by a google search this morning on how to better paste code into a textbox on Sharepoint.  I installed it so i could format the script I need to run tomorrow evening changing a bunch of site urls for a customer to make it actually legible for the Operations group to either bless or deny my change request

Who knew it worked with Wordpress.  But then again, I haven’t a clue how well it works.  It seems to be pretty decent, but time will tell.

Since I can’t leave with another text only post, here’s a picture I took of the monkeys last week on the train heading towards Hoboken.

Thursday was my annual office company picnic.  This year it was held in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.  Rather than driving the kids to the picnic as I’ve done in years past, I took them on the train to the office (had a meeting that I had to attend anyway) .  We then left the office with my group and headed to the park via subway.  A long afternoon, followed by two subways and two NJ Transit trains, we made it home by 7:30.  An enjoyable day was had by all.

{I have to admit to being somewhat impressed by this software…but it is only the first post after all.  I reserve the right to hates it down the road.  }

Craft on!

We hit another one of those childhood development milestones.  On September 8, they started kindergarten:

This past Saturday, they graduated:

I blinked and the school year was over.. well maybe it was longer than a blink, I did manage to read a bit, knit a few things and write a bucketload of computer code.  But still, time moves seriously fast when there are kids involved!  I’m proud of their accomplishments this year.  They are now readers, can tell basic time, and do addition and subtraction.  I don’t remember doing those in KG!  I remember cutting and pasting, snacktime and naptime  Well done my monkeys.  I can’t wait to see what this next year brings… (and even better, they start public school! – no more tuition…yaaaaayyyy!).  I love you guys.

Craft on!

Happy dad’s day! I’m spending today with the family, poolside avec lace.

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There’s been a number of requests for more information regarding the newest wheel in the herd. It is a double treadle Merlin Tree Roadbug.  Here is another shot of her nestled in her bag:

The pocket on the front of the bag is her second treadle.  When Dave modified his little portable wheels from single to double treadle, he didn’t modify its overall footprint.  Instead, he designed a removable second treadle.

You can just see the “left” foot off to the side here in this picture.  Also included for scale is my Van Eaton production wheel in the background (with the endless bag of CVM fleece).  I love the green monstah wheel on the Bug.

Here she is with both her treadles and set to spin:

From this picture you can see how her left treadle attaches.    She makes for a pleasant (if a smidge noisy) little spinner that fits perfectly on the boat.  I also like how the flyer poses no danger to anyone wandering too close to the wheel (beyond them hitting my leg and making me get whacked with the flyer) which was a concern with the Sonata and how her flyer was out back.

On other fronts, I finished the latest pair of socks at SnB on Thursday.

I decided not to reknit the first sock as there is so little difference between the pair, beyond actual stitch count (52 v. 56) and needles used (both US1 – dpn v. circ). At this point, I can’t tell which is which.

Craft on!

I think I’m going to start a new semi regular feature around here. Photos of things that make me smile. Today is a good day to start as I don’t have much knitting progress to show. I didn’t knit much during the commute but read. Last night I did work on the socks while watching the Sox and playing the Sims

For those that don’t know, NYC is a city of jaywalking. Very few cross in crosswalks or even wait for the light. So color me surprised when I went back to taking the PATH train a few weeks ago to the WTC and walking to my office near the Seaport.

There is no jaywalking near ground zero. These pedestrian safety officers block access with chains!

Craft on!

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And so starts another week. It is Monday again. Is It me or does it always seem like it is Monday? Oh well. At least it was a quiet weekend.

I had a multiple spinner personality on Saturday wherein I spun three different fibers on three different wheels. First up was new fiber for the cpw. This fiber is the May-June SAL in the Starcrossed color way- Bfl iirc. I spun a little of it before inspiration hit that i should use the van eaton production wheel as a production wheel. For a while now I’ve been spinning a huge bag of processed cvm on the vermont wheel. I decided to give over the remaining several pounds to the VE. Sadly about half a bobbin in, my newly bum foot was complaining pretty loudly. I hope that this is a temporary unhappiness and not something more permanent.

The schacht has been empty for far too long so it was time to get spinning on that wheel as well. I went shopping in the stash and came up with this ITW merino blend roving.

So there you go, three wheels – three fibers in one day. Wait make that four. I finally got around to plying the two pounds of grey BL that I bought at Rhinebeck this year and spun on the VE. In the end I have 1280 yards of Aran weight that will become a Rhinebeck sweater of some design or another for this year

Yesterday was turned over to the needles. I did a little dead project frogging on Saturday and reclaimed a number of yarns including this lovely lace weight merino that I started knitting a shawl with last summer I think (could have been the previous summer – must check ravelry to be sure). I repurposed it to become the Whisper cardi. I cast on after breakfast and here is where I start this morning.

Craft on!

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My father picked the kids up from school yesterday and took the boy for a haircut while I was at work. Thursday is my SNB night at Panera, which I go to straight from the train. I got a surprise this morning…

We haz a Mohawk …

He’s happy. We now need gel time in the morning routine.

Graduation is in two weeks

Craft on!

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