One Crazy Fiber Lady

Since my last post, we had halloween!

I started and finished a sweater for the little miss:

Project details are over here.

I started a sweater for me:

Project details are over here.

I started a sweater for the little mister:

Project details for this one are here.

Yesterday, I saw this pattern and just had to make it for my littlest niece.

All this knitting, with the exception of a purchase of a single skein of red yarn for the Monster Butt has been out of stash. ¬†The youngins went shopping in my stash to pick out the colors for the Drive-Thrus. ¬†That sweater remains my absolute favorite pattern for kids. ¬†The yarn I’m using for Eyelet Cardi was added to stash in February to knit another ChicKnits pattern but was redirected to this one.

This morning we got up rather early for a Sunday, got dressed quickly and had some breakfast before heading out to stand in line. ¬†The pediatrician’s office received their requested H1N1 vaccines and scheduled today from 9 to 1 to give the vaccines. ¬†We got there about 9:30 and after an hour wait, wrestled two reluctant kids into holding still and baring their arms, they were inoculated. ¬† This was followed by a trip to the dollar store for a reward for being good. ¬†Ha. ¬†Anyway, the rest of the afternoon has been spent outdoors, enjoying the surprise 66F day.

While the twins did this:

I played with this:

The fiber is BFL from SeeKay in Sunshine Day. ¬†I bought this fiber at the NJ festival in Sept. ¬†As you can see, I’m spinning it on the Kromski Sonata. ¬†She makes a lovely outdoor wheel

When I finished the second bobbin (the first 2oz were spun at Jessica’s house yesterday), I pulled out another project.

Oh yeah, that project was on another wheel  This would be the second half of the 4oz of BFL, also from SeeKay at NJ, but in Rubies.

When that was done, I pulled out yet another spinning project in progress:

Bet you thought it was going to be another wheel ¬†This is the Pumpernickel n Jam batt that I got from Into the Whirled at Rhinebeck on the midi Bosworth spindle also from Rhinebeck. ¬†I’m tired now

Outside the hobbies, I’ve been downright exhausted. ¬†We’ve changed development methodologies at work moving to an Agile system. ¬†Instead of only working on one particular area of the application, I’m now working on things across the entire system regardless of expertise. ¬†It has been like starting a brand new job. ¬†My brain is overloading with all this knowledge! ¬†I come home, have dinner, get the kids in bed and then by 9, I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. ¬†I’m hoping that as I get experience in the other areas of the app, I’ll be able to stay up like a big girl again. ¬†On top of this, there’s been drama that I just didn’t need. ¬†Oh well.

I’m off to ply the SeeKay singles into some yarn. ¬†The kids picked those rovings for their winter hats for this year. ¬†While it might be 66F today, that will not last much longer!

Craft on!

Yes, I was glum a few days ago. ¬†I’ve adjusted to life without a computer in my bag for a few day. ¬†Sadly the MacBook won’t turn on. ¬†It has an appointment at the Genius Bar tomorrow morning. ¬†Hopefully the damage isn’t too bad (I’m hoping against hope for something simple and cheap… and not the $600 logic board).

All is not bleak and dark now though.  My tax refund hit my checking account this morning.  Have to love direct deposit.  I already did my part to stimulate the economy and bought this:

My new 13.3 2.4Ghz MacBook. ¬†I shall not have an empty bag soon. ¬†I also ordered a RAM upgrade for it from J&R for way less than Apple charges. ¬†We have a new rule about beverages and laptops in my house. ¬†I guess that’s understandable.

Work is going extremely well too! ¬†I finished the development of a component that a partner company is waiting for yesterday, about 5 days ahead of schedule. ¬†Got a “you go” email from my boss. ¬†Yay me.

Mr. Not-s0-Greenjeans is moving right along.  I finished the second sleeve at SnB last night and picked up the buttonband this morning while commuting.  I was ecstatic when I got the same number of stitches on both front pieces the first shot.  I just need to adjust 2 stitches in the next row so that I have the right number for the stitch pattern.  Not bad if you ask me.   I also bought the perfect button for it last night. 

As my SnB buds noted last night, the sweater IRL is way bluer. ¬†The iPhone on the ferry in the morning isn’t capturing the true blue, but dulling it out to a denim-y blue instead. ¬†When it is done, I’ll try to get a good shot with the right light and the big Canon DSLR for ya. ¬†

Have a great weekend!

Craft on!

My geek radar is pinging.  I read about this new app on the elevator this morning and ran to my desk to check it out.

Go.  

I’ve got it already. ¬†

Still nothing on the MacBook, but I took a chance and plugged the power cable in. ¬†Got a faint glimmer of light from it. ¬†I think that’s a good sign. ¬†Its still sitting open and upside down near the central air vent, but not too close. ¬†

Sorry, no knitting progress to report. ¬†Fingers are too damned cold to knit on the train. ¬†On the upside, I was able to finish last week’s Time magazine while riding instead. ¬†

Craft on!

The last couple of days have seen definite Yin-Yang going on in  my life.  

Good:  

I finished the first sleeve for Mr. Not-So-Greenjeans on the way home Friday night.  I just need to get going on the second sleeve.

Even Better:

How far would you drive for a spin in? ¬†Here’s my answer (round trip)

JessaLu invited me to a spin-in at her house and because she said the monkeys could come, I did! ¬†We went up Saturday morning. ¬†Drive took just about 2 hours, which was then followed by many hours of spinning, good nibbles and excellent conversation. ¬†Can’t beat a house full of spinners!¬†We turned it into a slumber party! ¬†I had a blast, as did the kids. ¬†It was awesome to finally meet R. ¬†We went out for lunch on Sunday and from there headed home. ¬†It was a long drive but so worth it! ¬†Thanks Jess for having us.

Another good thing, I finished spinning up the final 8oz of Little Barn merino (first bobbin picture) that I bought in MD last year.

Now you may have noticed that there are no pictures. ¬†That’s the beginning of the bad. ¬†The Yin to the Yang. ¬†While I’d love to blame it all on tech problems, I did have camnesia at the actual spin-in. ¬†But I tried to take a picture of my hosts at lunch on Sunday. ¬†When I pulled out my Elph, it directed me to change the battery pack. ¬†Nice. ¬†I don’t have multiple battery packs for it. ¬†I’ll have to give it a go with the charger, but I’ve noticed reduced times between charging over the last couple of months. ¬†Might be time for a replacement. ¬†That’s one.

Oh-ho you have an iPhone, why didn’t you take picture with that, you might be asking. ¬†Well, when i got into the car Sunday to head to the restaurant, I noticed that my iPhone battery was blinking red. ¬†No prob, i have a car charger. ¬†’Cept it totally ignored the car charger. ¬†Borrowing Jess’ charger was helpful for the ride. ¬†Figured I could charge it up till we left lunch and have enough juice to get home. ¬†No no mon frere, not so fast. ¬†My car’s power ports (lighters for the older among us) are not powered when the car is off. ¬†Sigh. ¬†The phone was busy charging in Jess’ car while we ate. ¬†Ergo, no pictures of the charming hosts. ¬†That’s two.

I brought my MacBook with me over the weekend. ¬†Nothing surprising as it is usually with me. ¬†Fits nicely in that rice bag I bought about a month ago at Modern Yarn. ¬†I pulled it out to play with it at Jess’ and had awful trouble staying connected to her wifi. ¬†I’ve had periodic issues at home, but nothing like this. ¬†Ever notice how hard it is to Google for an answer when you can’t stay connected? ¬†ARG! ¬†I lost about 2 hours to the fight to get it working Sunday morning. ¬†In the end, I couldn’t get it to stay on her router. ¬†I did turn up that there was a problem with Leopard (10.5.3+) and wifi. ¬†I thought this was three, but I was premature.

Upon arriving home on Sunday, after unpacking and saying hello to the folks (who had been out at my sister’s in PA for the weekend), I settled down to work on the MacBook. ¬†I was in a bit of luck. ¬†Both the MacBook and my iMac were having trouble connecting. ¬†Not surprising, they were both running the same OS and both using Wifi. ¬†Long story short, got them both fixed by rolling back the wifi kext to the 10.5.2 version. ¬†Not a grand solution, but I’m having no problems connecting, nor staying connected now. ¬†Further pissing me off while fighting with that was the DVR was totally ignoring the remote and wouldn’t let me turn on anything. ¬†I got back at it, turned off the damn TV and turned on iTunes. ¬†So there. We won’t go into my mucking up the Sims 2 install on the MacBook because I was being dopey. ¬†I trashed it all and reinstalled (with the no-dvd patch) it but lost all my saves. ¬†Oh well, was getting tired of that family and house ¬†I started a new one.

I’m pretty sure I’d put the snow on the bad side of the ledger. ¬†We all know my distaste for the stuff. ¬†At least the folks were home and i didn’t have to snowblow ¬†The kids’ daycare was closed due to the snow yesterday and I worked from home. ¬†I had been working at my desk on my MacBook. ¬†I ran downstairs for a minute, leaving Kat in my room. ¬†She came downstairs to get me because she’d spilled some water on my desk while trying to play Tux Paint on my iMac. Oh yeah, the spill was on my computers. ¬† I grabbed a kitchen towel and went running upstairs to find a puddle with ice on the keyboard of the MacBook and a now half empty water glass next to it. ¬†I pulled the power cable off and thats about when it shut down. ¬†I hope I didn’t short anything out when it switched to battery. ¬†Sigh. ¬†I turned it over and massive amounts of water poured out of the keyboard. ¬†I took it apart (excellent instructions on the net for doing that!) and dried it with both a towel and a hair dryer on cool.

Want to know what the inside of a MacBook looks like?

and the underside of the keyboard…

I reassembled it, but the light on the power cord doesn’t come on when I plug it in. ¬†I’m have a faint glimmer of hope that a few days sitting unmolested will allow it to dry out fully and turn back on. ¬†

Having now sold my netbook to my mother, and the macbook out of commission, I have no little puter to schlep with me. ¬†Might get some knitting done during my commutes now as Jess joked last night. ¬†I had been planning on getting one of the snazzy new 13″ aluminium MacBooks with my tax refund (due to hit Friday!!!!!). ¬†The downside is that I had a prospective buyer for this one.

I’m starting to think that there’s a black cloud following me. ¬†In this morning’s freezing cold, I got stuck between the daycare center and my train station in some g-d awful traffic. ¬†There was no way I’d get through it and still make the train. ¬†I swung a U-ee and headed for a different station, closer to home. ¬†I don’t have a permit to park in that lot, and even if I did, it is full by 7:15AM. ¬†So I parked illegally in a shopper lot behind the CVS and walked over to the station. ¬†Upside, I can take the express trains today. ¬†Downside is that it is a 3¬†hour lot. ¬†I called home and mom thinks that they just ignore for the first offense. ¬†I was good with that. ¬†But there’s a thin ray of light coming through the cloud as dad got on the phone and offered to go get my car!!! ¬†They’ll pick me up tonight.

I hope that cloud is moving off.

Craft on!

Fortunately the creeping ick that passed through the house didn’t last through the weekend. ¬†Alex’s fever ended on Friday, figures because I took him to the pediatrician then. ¬†Saturday he was a little low key, which was all right be me. ¬†We took a pajama day and watched movies while I knit. ¬†After the monkeys went to bed, I watched The Other Boleyn Girl and finished Adamas which I blocked this morning:

I had my blocking supervisors to make sure all went well.

For some reason, I expected this shall to be smaller. No idea why, but I did.  I love it!  The pattern was easy to memorize and just looks very nice.  It reawakened my lace love and reminded me I have another lace project.  I pulled this one out again:

 

Wedding Ring Shawl

I managed to work 6 rows today and hope to do a few every day. ¬†This is a LONG TERM project, but it doesn’t have to be a forever one. ¬†

It was also time to return to Mr. Greenjeans, or in my case, Mr. Not-So-Greenjeans. ¬†I picked it up again late this afternoon while watching a hockey game. ¬†My Ex introduced me to the NHL when we were first dating and we regularly watched games throughout our relationship. ¬†Unfortunately our team is out of market. ¬†While I will root for the Devils as they are the local team, my heart belongs to the Boston Bruins. ¬†Guess this doesn’t come as a surprise with my avowed devotion to the Red Sox (3 days to the first spring training game!!!). ¬†G and I even went so far as to put up a satellite dish so we could watch our team play. ¬†When we split, he got the dish and I haven’t really kept up with the boys… or the rest of the NHL ¬†(with the exception of watching my fav player of all time win his first Stanley Cup after being traded to Colorado). ¬†

Now though, you don’t need a satellite dish to watch out of market games…

You just need a computer! ¬†I got an email last week from MLB.tv regarding the season subscription that was about to renew. ¬†They’ve packaged the remainder of the NHL season with it for an extra $25. ¬†SOLD. ¬†I have a lot of catching up! (Like when did Tampa Bay change their home uniforms to those dopey ones that say “BOLT” on them??)

Anyway, I made some serious progress on Mr. Not-so-Greenjeans:

Yup. ¬†I’m up to the cable rib portion at the bottom. ¬†Lurve the Malabrigo in the Buscando Azul. ¬†

I’ve stayed up way too last the last couple of nights so I think I’ll call it an early night,

Craft on!

I promise a better post shortly.   I know I have to fess up to what yarn actually came home with me from Seaport and I hopefully will do that either later today or tomorrow.

I ask now a favor. ¬†I just upgraded my WordPress from 2.6 to 2.7. ¬†I was waiting for 2.7.1 patch, but it apparently isn’t coming out so I figure it was time. ¬†If you see any problems and/or could leave a comment, I’d be most appreciative.

Craft on!

I can’t believe it has been a full week since my last posting. ¬†I’d been going at a pretty decent clip too. ¬†Oh well. Where have I been? ¬†Well, as if I needed another time suck, I fell for this one, pretty hard too.

Yes, I pretty much lost the last week playing The Sims 2 and the various expansion packs ¬†I’d played the first one years ago, on a machine that just couldn’t handle it and got frustrated early on. I don’t think I started it up more than once. ¬†One of the regular blogs I read, Redshirt Knitting has the occasional posting on the Sims which piqued my interest, as well as tickling my funny bone. ¬†So I bought it. ¬†Put it on my netbook, and I’ve been a goner since. ¬†Loves it! ¬†Last week, to further the addiction, Amazon had a couple of the expansion packs on sale (price is back up again) so I picked up a few. ¬† As my little netbook doesn’t have a kickass video card, I have the graphics tuned down to minimal levels, but it is so very playable and does look good. ¬†Sims 3 is out of the question ¬†I did consider getting the Mac version, but opted for the PC so I can tote it about with me. ¬†This is how I commute now:

The knitting? ¬†That’s the beginning of Rhinebeck (ravelry link). I have to fess up to messing up a few rows thanks to the distraction. I’ve ripped back, and playing the right group of Sims, I can knit at the same time. Glorious! ¬†I’m using ¬†Lavold Classic AL in Russet which I might have mentioned my last post (and I’m too lazy to look).

The other night, for whatever reason, the monkeys decided they wanted to have a slumber party. ¬†They both started out on the floor in Kat’s room on top of blankets spread out. ¬†A while later, as I yelled at them once again to go to sleep, I found them on her bed. ¬†Next they moved to Alex’s room where they finally went to sleep.

 

Puppy Pile - twin style

I love when they get along so very well. ¬†I’m pretty sure I have another picture of them sleeping, with one’s hand in the other’s face though they were quite a bit younger.

I really have been knitting. ¬†I joined a Travelling Scarf group over on Ravelry, the Red Sox Knitter’s Swap. ¬†The yarn I ordered from Webs has been backordered (don’t get me started on how pissed I am at Webs for taking well over a week to tell me that), so I went stash diving. ¬†I turned up 5 skeins of Cascade 220 in a deep red. ¬†A quick bit of web surfing turned up a double sided stitch pattern that makes diamonds. ¬†How perfect is that? ¬†I need to get my bit out in the mail to the next knitter by Thursday. ¬†I’m halfway to the requisite 10″ after starting yesterday before dinner so I shouldn’t have a problem. ¬†We need to take pictures of the scarf in progress, so here’s mine with the Seaport, Wavertree and Brooklyn Bridge in the background. ¬†

Speaking of dinner, the eagle eyed among you might have noticed the weight loss ticker in the right sidebar. ¬†I decided that while I don’t do full scale resolutions, 2009 is going to be the year I finally lose the rest of the baby weight (and use more stash than I buy). ¬†The twins are 5 after all. ¬†I joined Weight Watchers to that end and have resurrected my Wii Fit. ¬†So far, so good. ¬†I’m feeling good and finding the diet an easier one to live with. ¬†Jessalu has been a big help there!

That’s about it for today. ¬†Hopefully my next post won’t be a full week away.

Craft on!

Thank you everyone for your congratulations on the new addition to the family.¬† My sister and baby J are both doing well.¬† Not sure how S is adjusting to being a big sister, but she’s all of 17.5 months, so I’m sure my sister is in for some interesting times over the next couple of months.¬†

The downside to this new baby thing is that I lost my housewife for a week or so ¬† Mom went out to my sister’s house in Lancaster county to first watch S whilst J was being born.¬† She’s staying for a week to help Rikki out.¬† Sadly, that means I have to do all the domestic stuff that I’ve turned over to my mother a couple of years ago.¬† We can’t exactly eat out every night!¬† So this morning I got all Suzie Homemaker and made a pot of tomato sauce (gravy for those that call it that) and about 2lbs of meatballs.¬†

That simmering for hours, I put a load of wash in (somehow Kat had run out of clean undies) and set about dealing with the aging food mom had purchased earlier in the week.  Next up was slicing some london broil into very thin slices, browning and then simmering in brown gravy.  What we call Chicken Meat. Long story there but it got its name in an attempt to get Kat, the devout Chickenatarian, to eat some beef.  We called it chicken meat, she ate it, and the name stuck.  Its awesome over rice.  After that was a second load of wash, followed by folding and putting away of the first.  Whew.

I get to roast a turkey breast tomorrow.  Yay. 

I did finally manage to sit down for a while between the laundry and actually serving dinner and finished off the second of the felted bags for the teachers.¬† Here’s a picture of the two bags side-by-side.¬† iPhone once again included for scale.¬† Why yes, it is my favorite item for indicating scale

Teacher Bags - before the bath

After the kids go to sleep, I’m pulling out the flatbed mid-gauge knitting machine and while attempt to whip out a mile of iCord for the handles.¬† I’d like to get these into the washing machine tomorrow.¬† When they’re done, I’ll do a roundup of all the gifts including the rediscovered multidirectional scarf that I knit a couple of years ago for a teacher gift, as well as the socks I cranked out last Sunday.¬† Not a heck of alot of knitting, but some nonetheless.¬†

I’ve also been working on the Adamas shawl on the train, when not studying or otherwise occupied with the new electronic toy.¬† I got it in my mind that I only needed 12 repeats of the center chart and got all excited when I started that repeat.¬† For giggles, I pulled out the pattern to check if there was something different about the end of the 12th repeat only to read and find I needed 14!¬† I hate when that happens.¬† Oh well.¬† I still need to finish up the BSJ and ship it off, though I might just hold it for the family holiday gathering on Dec 27th.¬† Have to check to see if my sister will be heading out for that.¬† Oh and I need to make hats for my nephews and if there is time, coordinating scarves.¬† I got some STR Heavyweight in the semi-solids to knit those.¬† Busy busy.

I did get a chance to be seriously geeky yesterday though.  Check this setup out!

Why yes I was using em all!

You can see the tiny little Acer Aspire One between my 17″ iMac and the 14 or so inch Dell Inspiron.¬† The Dell was busy decrypting files I downloaded on the iMac while the hard drive was being repartitioned on the Acer.

For what you ask?  Why so I could do this:

Installing OSX

A while later and a few hacks:

Finder on my Acer Aspire One

I love seeing that Acer right about the Mac Apple

AAO Hackentosh Air

You can see on the left there that I have three “drives”:¬† MacOS, Acer and Share.¬† They are each about 50 gb.¬† Obviously I installed Leopard on the MacOS partition and formatted it appropriately for it.¬† The Acer partition is where Windows XP still lives and is NTFS and the third is for both to use for storage.¬† Nice huh?¬† I know, pretty geeky.¬† I’m dual booting the two OS’.

You see, I’ve been totally loving my little netbook.¬† The one thing that would have made it better in my eyes was if it was a Mac.¬† That had my looking at the Macbook Air.¬† It’s all of 3 lbs, which puts it in the okay to carry regularly category along with my 2.6lb¬†Acer Aspire One (hereinafter AAO).¬† So I started googling to see if there was a way to run MacOS on my PC in a similar way to how I run Windows on my Mac.¬† After much link clickage, I stumbled on someone who had installed MacOS on his AAO and that started the wheels in motion.¬† I now have an Acer Hackentosh Air for way less than the $1100 for last year’s Air.¬†

There are some limitations, like Sleep doesn’t work¬†and neither does the¬†wifi.¬† The wifi card that is pre-installed in the AAO isn’t compat with Mac.¬† Fortunately a Dell card is and readily available on eBay for under $15.¬† Yes, I’ve ordered one already.¬† There’s a how-to on the net as to replacing the sucker too.¬† Sweet.¬† I’m writing this post on the Windows portion of it now, hopefully by next week I’ll be able to do it on the Mac.

Call me a happy geek

Time to get out the knitting machine.

Craft on!

Kat had a minor freak out Monday morning because the socks I bought her over the weekend were too big.¬† Seems she has my feet.¬† Tiny.¬† Narrow.¬† Wigged out because the foot was too long and put the heel shaping up the back of her foot.¬† If I got it in place, wrinkles formed on the foot.¬† Showing her that commercial socks fit me the same way didn’t help.¬† Heck, the only way to get socks to really fit my feet is to knit them.¬† So…

What else would a knitting mother do?  Head to the sock yarn basket.  I had this skein of Koigu KPPPM in various pinks.  I traced her foot on a sheet of paper, making sure to put marks where the ankle bones are, and got knitting.  I took that photo on the way to work yesterday.  I turned the heel this morning and started the cuff on the way home.

Back to the instructions from my last posting.¬† All those who guessed IKEA guessed correctly!¬† Woot.¬† Yup.¬† It was time for the annual (or twice annual) trip to IKEA for a new chair for my bedroom.¬† I have a drop leaf table along one wall where my iMac lives.¬† When I work from home I sit there.¬† I’ve rotated through a couple of seats there, my Kromski spinning stool first, followed by a barstool I bought at Target.¬† Now, I have a chair with a back!

Sorry, tis the standard crappy lighting in my bedroom.  The yellow walls combining with the high hats and all the wood combine for this lovely coloring.  Sigh.

Gotta love this little girl.¬† She pulled out her knitting bag which is tucked next to mine and announced she was going to knit tonight.¬† By.¬† Herself.¬† “I know how!”

After popping on the Ott light, she settled into my knitting chair and tried knitting.

She’s not quite there yet, but did far better than she’s ever done.¬† She did wind up in my lap with my helping with the steps and needle control.¬† A regular repeat and I think she’ll be soloing in no time.¬† We decided the she’s making a doll blanket

Oh and some might notice the addition of the “Finished Items” in the sidebar.¬† The one thing I liked about Typepad was the photo albums there and how I used them to have a thumbnail view of all the projects I finished over the course of a year.¬† I didn’t want to use Flickr.¬† While it is nice, sometimes it goes down, sometimes there’s a delay as the files stream in from another network.. blah blah.¬† Whatever.¬† I wanted something here.¬† I couldn’t find a plugin for Wordpress.¬† So what does this geek do?¬† Write it herself.¬† I might not be a PHP/mySql wiz, but they’re not that much different from ASP/T-SQL, just a different dialect.¬† I added database tables, wrote the admin pages to add/edit the information and the album and project page.¬† Now it is just a matter of downloading all the photos from my Typepad album, move them here and paste in the text.¬† Cool.¬† I finished entering the stuff from 2004 and am on my way through 2005.¬† Who knew I was so prolific then?!¬† I’d love to know what you all think of it.

I’m off to watch the Sox and do a little knitting.

Craft on!

…not for me mind you. I’m still worried that ya’ll are tiring of this, maybe not now but another couple of weeks as it slowly creeps along fatigue will creep in. I’ll have to toss in something else to spare ya. For some odd reason, I’m not feeling the sock love. Shame since there is all that sock yarn, but that won’t go to waste, not with the NZAK sitting next to me. Oh yeah, I’m working from home today.

For probably the first time ever, I had a thought yesterday on the ferry that perhaps I should start working on hats/mittens/scarves for the shorties (and me) prior to the cold weather setting in. Instead of waiting for frozen fingers to start th projects, I could really start now and actually be prepared. I know. Shocking. Scared me too I wonder if getting Folk Knitting in Estonia from the IK Hurt Book sale probably has something to do with the desire to knit cute mittens eh?

While we wait for warm accessory inspiration to settle down into actual project, I’ll continue making progress on Ballerina.¬† I had extra knitting time yesterday between lunch with Kim and Deborah (who I had yet to meet!).¬† Lunch ended all too soon as I had a 2pm technical conference call with a client.¬† At least I was able to knit while on the phone.¬† Befuddled my coworker who was in the room with me while she watched me knit as I explained the configuration requirements of the software program I’d written.¬†¬† And then last night, after finally getting some late work done, I settled down with Ballerina and the Sox game on ESPN.¬†¬† I think I made decent progress, what do you think?

I think she’s coming along nicely!¬† It continues to grow one stitch at the hem edge every 6th ridge.¬† I’m tracking that with the help of this new app on my iPhone.¬† StitchMinder.¬† It’s pretty good.¬† Good timing too.¬† I was planning on trying to write something similar myself.¬† Picked up a couple of books on Saturday from B&N on coding for the Mac.¬† Signed up with the Mac Developers group and downloaded the iPhone SDK (software development kit) only to find that I needed to have Mac OSX Leopard installed.¬† I was still running Tiger, but fortunately my MacBook came with Leopard in the box if not on the computer.¬† I dug it out from where I had stashed the disk and got to upgrading. All is installed and I’ve started learning the language.¬† It isn’t much different from the others in concept, just the syntax.¬† Shouldn’t be too hard.

SnB tonight so expect more progress on Ballerina, even if I am working at home today and will lose the commute knitting.  I hope to make it up at the store

Craft on!