I am trying out a new style-sheet. I am not sure about it yet, so it may change before your eyes. If it does, don’t panic! 🙂

I am still working on the caterpillar cable. It’s quite nifty. If I only had my new Palm, I could take a picture of it right now.

Remember the show, The Prisoner? I bought the box set a few months ago, and finally, over the past few weeks, got around to watching all of the episodes.
I had always seen the same 5 or 6 episodes on PBS on Saturday nite as a kid, but never did see the last two episodes. Well, now that I have seen the whole series, all I can say is, Was he HIGH? What the hell was that? I can’t stop thinking about it. And at the same time, I love it, you get to decide for yourself who Number 1 is.

I went to buy a new palm today, the Zire 71, as I mentioned earlier. But, at the two stores I checked, they are all out! Boo. Who knew I was so trendy! Aparently, this Palm is hot stuff. I guess if I were still a stockholder, I would be happy. Oh well. I will shop online and see what’s up.

Here’s the link I mentioned for the less expensive Birkenstocks that I found in Squib’s blog. www.birkenstock-cn.com.
Turns out it might not have been my browser at home because I can’t find her archives at work either!

So it’s been a long few weeks.
The Job
I started the new job, and all is well. And now I can carpool with my hubby, so even better.
The Shawl
I decided to pull it out back to where I know it’s correct, and start over. So I did. I am on row 4 of the restarted rows. After pulling out over 20 rows. And they are long rows.
The Swank
I have been doing the Swank-along. This is a knit-along in one of the mailing lists that I frequent. I don’t know what the end result will be, but I am learning some new techniques as I go. The first is that I decided that now is a good time to try combined knitting, where you wrap the purls the other way which puts the front leg of the knit stitches on the back side of the needle. It’s different, and it seems to matter which way the yarn is spun. If I am reading this right, my yarn is S spun, and tends to unwrap a bit on the purls.
Then, I learned Caterpillar cables, which are made by short-rowing before the cable crossover. I don’t know if this is the only definition of Caterpillar cables, I had never heard of them before trying them.
There is also opportunity to practice knitting back backwards, which I have already learned to do on the Fuzzy Feet felt-along. I really like this technique, and use it all the time now when doing short rows.
The Diet
My hubby and I decided to try doing a lo-carb diet for a week, then evaluate the results and decide whether to continue or not. Well, to quote Roxy from Showtime’s Dead Like Me, it makes your breath smell like ass. That and the fact that neither of us had, uh, normally expected digestive events, made us decide thumbs down on the lo-carb. We did both lose 10 pounds in the first couple of days, but we beleive this is caused by the fact that we were drinking tons of water in an attempt to, uh, get things moving. So, for dinner on Friday night, we went for sushi, resulting in a wonderful digestive event. I knew edemame was the miracle bean they always say it is.
The House
We should be closing — or ‘passing papers’ for you New Englanders — by the end of the month. It’s been such a long escrow, that we still aren’t really excited. We shall soon be exhausted, I am sure, with all the things we want to do to make the place ours.
The Gadgets
I have been eying the newish Palm Zire 71 to upgrade from my M505, which is actually fine, but I want more, because I am spoiled.
I am thinking with a camera in my hand all the time, I will be more likely to take a pic of my knitting and update this blog!
I finally got our laptop back on our home network after someone hacked our router. We had to change all the passwords and things so we finally got all the machines set up with the new settings. Whew!
The Feet
Aren’t they beautious? I read an entry on Squib’s Blog and ordered a pair of Birkenstocks from Germany. And of course, my browser on the laptop doesn’t like her blog, so I can’t find the link to share. I will have to add that in later. The shoes arrived some time last week, and are really nice. They are of the “footprints” style and are more narrow than the Alton’s that I have, and so I wore thick socks to break them in today. I think my feet are bruised, but they will fit dammit!!!

I’m here, really. I just disappeared again. I keep failing to pay attention. Will be back soon, really!

I start a new job on Monday. Well, same job, really, but new source of money. I am working at a consulting firm, and have been at the same client for 2 years, and they decided to offer me a full-time position, and I accepted. The money was actually quite comparable, plus I get cool discounts on various merchandise which was formerly off-limits to non-employees. Can you say Christmas shopping? I think you can. If only they sold yarn…
Times are sure to be crazy for the next few months. New job for me, new job for my husband, new house for both of us. And we will be able to carpool most days. (That means I can knit in the passenger seat at least one way. Cool. )
The next step is to purge the apartment of the things that I don’t want to pay some guy a lot of money to move to the house. Paper weighs a lot, and they will stuff as much of it in a box as they can to sell you as many boxes as they can. Time to use the shredder. I haven’t been doing my ‘file this year/shred last year’ much this year. I have only been filing. So now I have to un-file and shred. Exciting weekends ahead for me, I tell ya.
Happy Friday!

If you were working on a lace shawl, since March, and you were on row 20 of a ~30 row lace chart, and you suddenly noticed that in that tiny, tiny print at the top of the chart, it does not, in fact, say “Lace Pattern 1” but it says “Lace Pattern 2?”
OH MY GORD.
Actually, it does explain a few things. How in the world did I miss that? Should I frog and start over from the center when I am about 2/3 done? Should I just keep going and call the shawl “inspired by the shawl ‘Fir Cone'”? I could always do lace pattern 1, a bit differently, but after lace pattern 2. At least its on size 3.5mm needles, not 1mm or something.
What would you do?

I haven’t changed my imood icon for a long time, it’s been outraged for quite a while. There are generic reasons that can be laughed off, like the fact that the president is cutting this country off from the very countries that will be there for us on the next September 11th. Here’s someone with plenty to say about the generic stuff and some great quotes that are just in my mood: The Spirit Trail
Today, there’s a very specific reason. A friend of my sister’s arrived in Iraq on Friday last, and he’s already dead.
And that’s all I have to say about that.