You know, gentle reader, #1 Son is so grown up and all that sometimes I forget that for another 8 months he is, officially, a teenager.

#1 Son has been working hard (and this is no joke) and saving his money for a band tour outside the country in January. I have told him in no uncertain terms that TBOM (The Bank Of Mom, a small and thrifty local financial concern) will not extend credit for this venture and is closed to further withdrawals for any business plan that does not result in actually making a living.

The other day, my phone rang and the conversation went something like this:

#1 Son: Hi, mom. I almost have enough saved up for the trip now.

Mom: That’s wonderful. Congratulations. ❗

#1 Son: I need to buy my ticket and get my visa. So could I borrow $100 just until the next paycheck?

Mom: Is everyone else buying their tickets now? ❓

#1 Son: I don’t know.

Mom: Don’t you think it would be a good thing to coordinate with them? Have you talked to them about it? ❓

#1 Son: We had a practice a couple of weeks ago and we sort of talked about it.

Mom: And??? 🙄

#1 Son: Nobody has enough money yet.

Mom: Don’t you think it would be a good idea to coordinate your ticket buying, so you all end up down there at the same time? 😯

#1 Son: We’re not necessarily going at the same time. Colin is going first. And them Mike and Katie and I are going later.

Mom: Maybe you’d want to coordinate with Mike and Katie? When are they buying their tickets? ❓

#1 Son: If we end up on different flights, we’ll just meet each other at the airport.

Mom: [keeping voice calm] When are Mike and Katie getting their visas? 😯

#1 Son: [slowly, thinking through this new idea] Yeah. I suppose we could all buy our tickets at the same time and get our visas together. That might work.

Mom: That sounds like a really good idea! ❗

#1 Son: OK. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Love you!

Mom: Love you, too!

I hung up the phone and started slowly banging my head against my desk.

My colleague in the next cube smiled and asked, Call from your son?

On the knitting front, I have become monogamous to The Great Green Glob. It turns out that the edging is mindless enough that I can knit it while teleconferencing, etc., and TGGG wads up into a small enough space that carrying it around isn’t an issue. I will finish it! I’m only two shells from the center corner.

I’m actually looking forward to the I-cord edge. And I’m not an I-cord lover, so that says a lot about how badly I want this project done.

Besides, the Raven has landed at Blue Moon and some of it will be shortly winging my way, as soon as the lovely ladies there get to my order in the avalanche that hit them when the Raven series went live.

Stay tuned. Film at 11 (or whenever the mailman delivers).

So… Is Mercury retrograde or something? I tell you, gentle reader, I have not had a happy couple of weeks in the techie arena.

fun-house hallway

The hotel that most of the Floating Knitting Retreat participants stayed at promised free internet access with computers available and everything. The picture shows the hallway at the hotel. Looks like a fun house or house of mirrors, doesn’t it? One could actually walk down the hallway in a straight line, but it took a bit of mental effort because turning left and right and left and right just seemed natural. I didn’t dare have a couple of drinks and then brave the hallway. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

But I digress.

Computers were available. The interweb, alas, rarely was. Twice during my 5-day/4-night stay I was actually able to see that I had email, and who the email was from. I was never allowed to actually read my email, or respond to it. The rest of the time, IE refused to respond, leaving the hotel guests frustrated. Rebooting didn’t help. Talking to the computer didn’t help. Yelling at the computer didn’t help. I had a serious email jones going by the time I arrived home on Thursday afternoon. I nearly ran to my (lovely, new, working) computer and booted up. All was fine until I tried to read my email. No internet connection.

This can’t be happening, I thought. I tried everything I could think of. No internet. But wait! I have another working computer! Swiftly I booted up #1 Son’s computer. No internet. 😥

I decided that I just might, maybe, require a tiny bit of geeky assistance. So I called my DSL provider and talked to a very nice woman in India who, fortunately, spoke excellent English and was able, over the span of a 30 minutes or so, to test my line, verifying that the modem that has served me well for many years was, actually, as dead as Marley’s doornail. These things happen. They would be able to send me a new one in a week or so, she told me. ACK! 😯 There followed a philosophical discussion in which we covered the meaning of the terms will not support and will not work when applied to modems, and how those terms really don’t mean the same thing. Because I was not going to wait for another week for internet access. You don’t understand, I told her. I can’t read my email. Nice people think I’m ignoring them. I can’t write about anything. My readership will be down to people who come here via mistaken searches for strange terms unrelated to knitting. A week is not acceptable. She replied, in perfect British-accented English, words to the effect of You’re on your own. Have a nice day.

I threw my coat on. I was sure that the local computers-r-us-type store was still open. They were. And, lo and behold, there was a big display of modem/router combo boxes with my DSL provider’s branding. I snatched one up and ran home and plugged everything in and set up the security. When I tried to browse to any site, I was redirected to a page that told me to reactivate my account. Although I could actually (miracles never cease) remember my password, it would not reactivate. I got #1 Son’s computer connecting wirelessly to the router. It would not activate either.

Cat & Lucy on the inter-island ferry.
How cool is that?

Figuring that it was their brand and so they couldn’t just leave me hanging, I called tech support again. This time I spoke to a very nice young man in India who spoke perfect, British accented English, who told me his name was Harry, which I am sure it was not. Never fear, Ms Becker, Harry said. I can help you with that. And he did! It was click here and check this box and a little reboot. And I have email! And I have the internet! And I can write and read and browse and catch up! And my connection is fast! Fast and stable! And, no, I don’t think these are too many exclamation marks! ❗ ❗ ❗ I will mark your problem solved now, Ms Becker. Sorry you had to call us twice.

Ahh……. [vast relief]

But you did not come here to read about my techie woes. (Is Mercury going the right direction again?)

The last few days were full of Cat Bordhi and her amazing sockitecture, Lucy Neatby and double knitting coolness, beautiful scenery, wonderful knitters, and the neatest little ferry you’ve ever seen.

Look! In the picture! That is Cat introducing Lucy, who taught us wonderful things about double knitting, like how to double-knit a completely invisible pocket. And a cool new way of doing a standard bind-off in one motion. Lucy is nutty and wonderful and I’m sure has forgotten more about knitting than I will ever know. I plan to eventually order every single one of her DVD’s. In Lucy’s hands, even simple things like, well, binding off, become new territory to explore. And double knitting is magical and exciting. And all of Lucy’s stitches are happy ones.

we got used to this kind of scenery

I’m already planning a pair of socks with little double-knit pockets. I don’t know what I will do with them, but won’t they be cool?

Cat carried around a little iPod Nano with chapters from Lucy’s DVDs loaded, and she let me play with it a little bit. Now that is a use for an iPod that I can really understand! I think I’m going to have to get one. A green one. And I can watch knitting videos on it.

But I’m telling you things all sort of out of order, aren’t I? And already this is a long post.

Tomorrow I will post a blow-by-blow of the whole retreat sans techie side trips. For now, I do have some of my pictures sorted and in a gallery. The people-pictures (as Mama used to call them) are in the front, and the scenery pictures are towards the back.

I had a wonderful time and met many wonderful people and enjoyed myself enormously. And I’m glad to be home. And have everything working.

Hopefully brief, that is.

Over the weekend, I was visited by some wild hare and decided I really needed to upgrade my computer. Now… my computer has been my faithful companion for three years, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it at all. But it was getting a little long in the tooth and struggling with a few newer programs I’d loaded. It was a little noisy, too, being built before quiet PCs were a good thing. Sometimes I could fancy that the fan noise almost sounded like it was breathing.

In reality it was probably gasping for breath. (Note to self: Blow the dust out occasionally, eh?)

So I decided to upgrade. With a PC of this age, that pretty much means new everything. New CPU, new motherboard, new drives, new video card, etc. I saved my sound card, my CD drive, my floppy drive, an old zip drive and a card reader. And my printer and monitor, of course. And my operating system (Win XP).

After a little research, I ran up to PC Club, where they just happened to have the exact parts I wanted. It was like fate, I tell you.

Note: I’ve done this before. I’m usually fairly successful. The things just plug together. It’s like Legos, sort of.

I got started after dinner Saturday night putting it all together. I had the old computer torn apart and the new one almost ready for a test firing when I realized that I needed a new power supply. Then I remembered that the one in #1 Son’s computer would work. So I pulled the power supply from his, put it in mine, hooked it all up, plugged it in, turned it on, and copied the old disk over to the new disk.

I knew I would have to do a repair install of XP, which I did. But then it would boot as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot, and then go as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot… lather, rinse, repeat. I didn’t know what to do. And, if you are keeping track, you will note that #1 Son’s computer wasn’t working either now, so I had no way to look it up on the internet and see what a fix might be. So I decided to reinstall Win XP from scratch, which meant all of my software, while still there on my disk, needs to be reinstalled because Windows doesn’t know where or what it is.

Note to self: Leave one working computer at all costs.

I should have just gone to bed. In the wee hours of the morning, I fried my old drive, thus rendering any kind of reinstall of the old system impossible. And I melted (yes…. melted… very exciting!) my floppy drive and probably fried my zip drive as well.

I now have two working computers, but I’m still trying to recover software. So you will excuse me because I haven’t written, I haven’t read any blogs. I’ve done a little knitting, but I can’t show you pictures because my PC still won’t talk to my camera. It’s an interesting time over hear at chez PI, gentle reader.

So far I have a nice, new, very fast, very efficient, very quiet….

doorstop.

letter and ladybug markers

Well, it turns out there’s no need to wait for the official markers to use with Cat Bordhi’s new book. (Of course, if you want to wait you can.)

Look at these lovely little markers! They are brought to you by J L Yarnworks’ Etsy shop. Cat’s patterns require the letters A through F. This stitch marker set comes with A through H. I really like the “knit to A then do blah then knit to B and do yadda” directions in Cat’s book, and I see using the same sort of marker philosophy (if you will) for other projects like lace. A couple of extra letters could come in handy. J L Yarnworks’ Etsy shop mentions that the entire alphabet is available. Cool! Maybe next secret pal whatever I’ll spell my pal’s name in stitch markers as a little extra goody. 😉

There are a bunch of different beads available, so no matter what your preference I bet you could get a set that’s your favorite colors. My markers are black and a really pretty silver-blue. These are nicely made markers with no rough edges or pokey bits to snag the finest yarn. And at a very reasonable price! Love ’em, love ’em, love ’em.

socks with markers

Love the little ladybugs, too. OK. Who doesn’t love a lady bug? Sometimes my larger projects need a little bling, too. I’m using one of the ladybug markers on a top secret project (shhhh… ), and every time that little lady bug comes around, I just have to smile at it looking up at me with its beady little eyes. I fancy it’s saying, OK. But I’d really rather prefer eating aphids in the garden.

When you were a child and a ladybug landed on you, did you used to say the little rhyme Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn. When I was little, my mother taught that to me and to this day I still faithfully recite it to the ladybugs in the garden. But it is rather morbid, isn’t it? A rather strange sentiment.

But I digress.

I would love to show you how fun the little ladybug looks flying around my needle, but it’s a secret project. So, it’s… secret. All will be revealed in time.

By the way, there are other really cute little beads where these came from: penguins and fish. You must go look at the little penguins! You will die from the cuteness.

My socks feel so nicely balanced, now that I have the right stitch markers on both socks. Ahhhhh….

sock progress

This is the instep side. I have one more pattern repeat to go, and then I turn the heels. These socks are almost knitting themselves. Maybe it’s because the pattern repeat is only 6 rounds, or because the cables turn every three rounds, but I always feel like I’m making progress. And before you know it, I’m almost done with this section. Except they’re on hold right now. Because I have to work on the secret project.

No, I can’t tell you what it is. It’s secret. (shhhhhhh…)

On another topic, you parents out there with newly-adult-ish teenagers… How are you coping? This was the conversation I had with my son on Tuesday:

#1 Son: Hi, Mom. Just wanted to let you know I’m on my way to California.

Mom (attempting to shift mental gears quickly): You are? Why? Don’t you have to go to work?

#1 Son: I don’t have any hours scheduled until Saturday. A friend has a family member who is very sick. She needed someone to go with her and there isn’t anybody else that’s available. We’re taking her car. I’ll be back Saturday morning.

Mom: Where are you going? Bay area?

#1 Son: San Luis Obispo. But we’ll probably spend tonight in the Bay Area then drive the rest of the way tomorrow. Her car is a little car with standard transmission. Driving a stick is really fun.

Mom: I love you. Please drive carefully.

Gentle reader, if you are the parent of an almost-adult-ish teenager, how are you coping?

One of the things I do to cope is to concentrate on other things. Like the software under the covers of this blog. I use a lot of plugins to do various cool things like the little gadgets in the sidebars, and the spell checker, and the doohickey that closes commenting on a post after a particular length of time. Sometimes one or the other of the plugins has issues. And sometimes it’s darned hard to figure out which one it is.

Lately, every time I publish a post, the sidebars would only load a little way down the left hand side, and then nothing more would load. The only way I could get the site to load all the way again was to turn off some of the plugins. So, one after another, you may have noticed things disappearing. And coming back. And disappearing again. And going wonky.

Yesterday I finally figured out what it was. It was the little word cloud in the left-hand sidebar. The plugin that builds the cloud takes all of the words from every post I’ve ever written, sorts them out, eliminates words like the, and, but, takes the top words, and makes the little cloud. Well… it turns out that I’ve been kinda wordy. Go figure! The poor thing was just choking on the number of words that my fingers have typed over the years. I’ve taken pity on it, and limited its cloud-making effort to the most recent 500 posts.

Can you believe I’ve written more than 500 posts? Me either.

At any rate, when I hit the Publish button, all should be well. Or, at least that’s the theory. Keep your fingers crossed. Here we go…

[ed.] And everything is OK. Yea! And #1 Son just called to report he is just north of Redding, they will be driving all night, and he’ll be home early in the morning. My request that he be careful and drive safely was met with: Why do you worry? I’ve done this millions of times. To which I can only reply, I worry because I’m your mother. It’s my job.

heel gone wrong

A bit of truth in knitting — not every experiment has a happy ending. Some are downright, er… heelish.

It started out innocently enough. I wanted a two-stitch band in the center of the heel to flow into the scale pattern where the heel joins the leg. And I wanted a scale on the heel to match where I was in the scale pattern on the foot. So I started wondering what Eye Of Partridge stitch would look like on the diagonal. Then I thought it would be cool if the EOP swooped around the scale and followed its shape.

See how quickly things can get out of control?

The red line follows a column of EOP stitches as they swoop up around the scale at the top of the heel flap. It looks sort of cool, but doesn’t have enough diagonal-ness. The color changes caused by the EOP slipped stitches obscure the directionality.

And then there’s that weird bump caused by the increase/decrease pair that starts the scale.

And then there’s that wonky corner caused by the decreases that force the EOP to run diagonally.

Ick.

a Simpsonized #1 Son

This heel is making its way to the great frog-pond in the sky, while I try to decide what I really want to do here.

I might try a regular slipped-stitch heel-stitch. It would be more strongly diagonal. And if I pulled it up into the ankle until the next scale started on the leg… that might look cool.

I’m not sure about the weird bump and the wonky corner. But they may block out. Or maybe I just need to have a more strongly vertical stitch or two at the side.

Hmmm…. must think about this…

On another note, I was having so much fun Simpsonizing myself, that I decided to Simpsonize #1 Son, too. No word yet on whether he appreciates my efforts.

And on a completely different note, New Pathways For Sock Knitters, Cat Bordhi’s new book, appeared in my mailbox last night. Gentle reader, you need this book. I promise to do a proper review soon, when I can carve out time to do it justice. For now, I will say that the book is gorgeous, and Cat’s new architectures are wild and cool and I now have socks running all around in my brain, and if I didn’t have such a hard-and-fast rule about finishing pairs of socks, the dragon scale socks and their heelish wonkiness may have found themselves instantly abandoned.

And I, being a total dork, keep peeping at page 22. I haven’t seen my name in print since I won honorable mention in a poetry contest I didn’t know I’d entered in the 6th grade, and the local paper printed the winners (and thus I found out I’d entered). I’m so honored to be included in something so beautiful.

not so globby, but still green

Last weekend wasn’t all Harry Potter. I did take a little time out now and again to work on the Great Green Glob. I finished the pine trees and the sand dollars. Next up is the water. Then bubbles. Then fish. Then one border. Then another one. Then some I-cord. And it keeps on getting bigger and bigger.

Some of it looks a little wonky in the picture. In person, the seagulls are flying straight and the trees line up and the sand dollars are round. I didn’t do that great a job pinning it out for this picture. I really need blocking wires to keep it straight. But, it’s really not nearly as wonky as it looks.

Since birth, the Great Green Glob has lived on a variety of needles. It’s currently on an Addi Lace needle. I really, really, really love those needles. I can’t imagine a better needle for lace — and that include the Knitpicks needle that the Great Green Glob was on previously.

Knitting bouts were but brief interludes. UPS (do those guys have great legs, or what?) delivered my preordered copy of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows at about 11:00 AM on Saturday.

In grade school I used to drive my reading teachers nuts. My reading habits used to drive my Mama nuts, for that matter. As I child, I always had my nose stuck in a book, no matter what else I might be doing at the time. But… confessions, now… I rarely read a book from front to back. I read them back to front. I read them front, then back, then middle. I start randomly in the middle and read towards both ends at the same time. I skip around. If the author skips from character to character, letting one rest for several chapters, I will skip ahead to find out what happens to that character and then go back to catch up to the others.

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

So… I will admit it. I read the last part first because I didn’t want to wade through 750 pages to find out. Then I started back at the beginning, with a resolve to read it cover to cover, no cheating. And I kept my resolve.

Risking being branded a heretic, I will say that I think the beginning was a bit of a slog. But somewhere around the middle, the action picks up considerably. I don’t think that knowing parts of the ending made the middle part any less exciting. I was turning pages quickly and reading fast and I couldn’t wait to get to the next part. The last 1/2 of the book was definitely a good read.

I will not give anything away here, never fear. If you want to start at the end of the book… you’re on your own. I found the ending satisfying. For one who cut her teeth on fantasy, it wasn’t all that surprising (again, this does not imply I don’t think it was a fun read). But it was satisfying. Ends were tied up, questions were answered, etc. I give it

Now… on to other things.

What do you think you would get, gentle reader, if you crossed Yahoo Groups, My Space and Widipedia, then added yarn? Well, I’m not sure exactly either, but I’m betting it would look a whole lot like Ravelry. I know you’ve probably heard enough about this already. But, no matter if you don’t plan on organizing yourself, this is a terrific tool. If you haven’t already, go and get yourself in line for an invitation. And there’s a new feature where you can look yourself up and see where you are in the list. I know that people are being sent invitations just as quickly as possible. I waited 3 months for mine. It’s so worth it!

If you’re already on Ravelry, add me to your friends list, or look me up. I’m there as jabecker (I’m so incredibly creative with names — I’ve used this screen name various places for 15 years).

In other news, #1 Son returned from his travels. His first bit of business, I thought, was to find gainful employment. He would, he told me, but not during his birthday week.

Excuse me? Birthday week??? Since when does anyone get a week off just because it’s their birthday? 🙄 Welcome to the real world, my child.

I expressed my displeasure.

#1 Son starts his new job tomorrow. 😉