Tag: pics

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
Links News Travel

40 is the new 30


Nancy and Paula

I’m back from my fabulous 40th birthday celebratory cruise to the Caribbean. There was much snorkeling (that’s my sis and me in the pic, in Grand Cayman) and swimming and walking and kayaking and shopping and sweating (lordy was it hot and humid!) and drinking and singing (karaoke and piano bar FTW!) and eating and relaxing and reading and laughing and not nearly enough dancing (my knee and ankle just didn’t cooperate) and celebrating in general. And perhaps best of all, I only gained two-tenths of a pound-?!! Woot!

For those so inclined, pics can be found here (that’s the edited-for-quantity set).

I need more kayaking in my life. Good exercise combined with zero strain on my weakened lower extremeties = general awesomeness. More snorkeling would be awesome too, but to be honest, the Pacific scares me a bit. (Sharks!)

ION, I need something new to look forward to. Too soon to start planning for next year’s Disney trip? Hmm…..

Categories
Blogs Links News

Missed it by *that* much


Polgara and Gracie, on the occasion
of celebrating Miss Gracie’s 2nd birthday

I just realized I missed my blog’s two year anniversary last month. Oops? That’s what I get for neglecting it so.

Also celebrating her two year anniversary is Miss Gracie (as well as her brother Noah). Unlike my stale and boring blog, Grace grows more adorable and engaging every day. Unfortunately I’ve been neglecting her too, which is even more shameful than ignoring this blog. This is my note to myself to go visit her next weekend.

In related news (related to the blog, that is), I’ve been working on updating JaneEspenson.com this weekend. It’s been languishing in the very outdated Greymatter that it first started in, so yesterday I just up and ported it over to WordPress. (Yes, it was that easy!) Now comes the hard part–the design. Man, I suck at design. I’ve gone through bazillions of free theme templates and downloaded a bunch that I like, but I don’t want a cookie-cutter design for Jane’s site, which means actually doing some work on my part. Yay? I found one template I thought I loved, but really I just love the colors (not the layout or the font), so now I’m looking for the right layout that I can then edit with the pretty colors. Someday I will learn the ins and outs of CSS enough to build one from scratch, but that day is not today.

But because of this quest for improving Jane’s site, I now look at this site and think, Booooor-ing, and yawn in its face, so it’s very likely that this site will be getting a facelift soon. I have to finish JaneEspenson.com first, though, as it’s been stagnant for far longer than this site has.

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!