PI will be down for hosting service maintenance starting Saturday, January 31, 2009, at 6:00 AM EST.

I’m not sure how long the outage would occur. It’s expected to last an hour or two. But stuff happens.

Email will be down as well as the web site. I don’t think I will actually lose any email – I just won’t have access to it for awhile. But, just in case, if you send me email tomorrow and don’t hear back from me for a day or two, please resend.

toes. still.

I know that, from this picture, it looks like I haven’t made any progress on the latest socks.

Not. True.

They look very much the same as the last picture because I’ve frogged them back 3 times — twice just to the end of the toe increases, and once all the way. I just couldn’t get happy with the results of the stitch pattern. First I didn’t like the way I’d done the double-decreases. Frogged to start of stitch pattern.

I tried a different double-decrease, and I didn’t like how it ended up looking like very narrow Jay Walker chevrons and didn’t play very well with the way I placed the toe increases. Frogged all the way.

I tried a more standard feather-and-fan pattern, using KFB increases instead of YO because I didn’t think the colorway would play well with lace. I used KFB increases on the toes, too, to keep the whole theme going. The pattern did not look good with the colorway. Frogged to start of stitch pattern.

I’m sort of back where I started now. I’m using the double decrease from the second attempt, along with KFB increases. I don’t think it resembles the Jay Walker pattern too much now. And I like the way it’s working with the colorway.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Also in the mean time has been this little root canal thingy. And new tires for #1 Son. And freezing fog along with another tiny smattering of snow. (text message from #1 Son: Snow. So. Over. It.) And, well… life.

But I’m feeling that next two weeks are going to be good! For one thing, at the end of today I will be officially on vacation! Next week I’m heading up to Friday Harbor for Cat Bordhi’s annual visionary retreat, where, it is to be hoped, I will get something done on the book and get to rub elbows with some amazing people in a gorgeous setting. And right after that is the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival, where I’m taking a class from Nancy Bush and rubbing elbows with more amazing knitterly and fiberly types until Saturday. What more could I ask?

So, if you are at Madrona, be on the lookout for me. I usually carry a blue knit bag dotted with buttons from Ravelry and PDX Knit Bloggers and Persistent Illusion and other stuff. Other than the one class I will be foot loose and fancy free, as the saying goes. Step up and say hello!