Well… that was the upgrade from hell.

I think it’s all OK now. I hope. After completely rebuilding my WP installation from scratch and completely revamping my theme. I think we’re good to go.

Do let me know if you find something that’s broken or weirder than usual. And thanks for your patience.

Confidential to WP developers: Your opinion that something doesn’t make sense should not be taken as an indication that it’s OK to remove functions that users have come to rely on, or to make those function suddenly out of reach of those who aren’t comfortable hacking about with their templates. Nor is it OK to just willy-nilly rename stuff simply because it would be so much cleaner. And, yes, I realize that this is a labor of love for you. How wonderful. Working for a large company where that sort of no-warning impact to downstream users would get you fired might give you a slightly different point of view. It’s not about you any more. It’s about your thousands of clients who want things to just keep working.

Persistent Illusion was down for awhile yesterday during a fairly major WP upgrade. The changes should be mostly transparent. But if you find something that’s broken, please let me know!

So… not much knitting to show. The Rooster Feather socks are in the knitting black hole. It doesn’t matter how long or how diligently I knit on them. If you look at the picture in the last post, that’s pretty much what they still look like. Progress only comes in tiny little increments. I have an inch or two left before the gusset increases start. I have to be ready to turn the heels by Tuesday. I. Will. Make. It.

You know, when #1 Son moved out I lost half my blog-fodder. I must resolve to do something more than work (not blogged about) so I have more stuff to blog. Either that or I’m going to have to start hanging out with #1 Son and all his buddies.

No… As much as I love him… well… I think not.

Confidential to Maia: Your first comment was put in moderation. I have no idea why, since there didn’t appear to be anything remotely spam-like about it. At least it didn’t send you to the FBI site, which is what it used to do. There seems to be a very fine line between “spam” and “not spam.” I’d really like to eliminate the former while letting the latter go through uneventfully. The technology just doesn’t seem to be quite there yet.

If anyone else ever has problems posting a comment, please let me know!

On another note, gentle reader, I don’t know if you have seen the new article by Kate Antonova in knitty.com titled It’s not a stash… It’s a collection? It’s a good article. But, just remember, you heard it here first.

It’s been a long time since this project last saw the light of day. It was one of my unfinished projects of 2005 (yes, you read that correctly), and I don’t recall working on it much at all last year. But you can see that it’s grown quite a bit since the last time it was in the public eye.

This is Clapotis #2 in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed color #13 (Cool Blue). It rather resembles faded denim in real life.

Since I’ve made it a resolution to knit socks only with my classes until I deal with some of my UFOs, and since the sock class was postponed due to inclement weather, I was forced into a non-sock project (hence the reason for the resolution). This was the only UFO that really could be considered mindless knitting.

And why was mindless knitting required?

Well… there’s this thing about technology. I like technology. It brings light and warmth to my house, lets me talk to friends and loved ones that are far away, brings the world in the form of the internet right into my house, enables my self-indulgence in the form of this little blog. So I like technology. But…

… it also lets me work from home.

That means that a concept like snow day which means a day off for many people, means that I get to do the same work as I usually do every day, except in my sweats and with knitting in hand (and usually a cat in my lap). But, since I am working, knitting must not interfere with my ability to produce the desired outcome, and therefore must be mindless.

Plus… By Thursday afternoon when the snow finally melted enough that I could drive, I had succumbed to the cold that #1 Son was so helpful in sharing with me — and with all his friends and coworkers, apparently.

Oh, you got my cold, Mom? That sucks. Yeah… everybody is getting the same cold I had. Does your throat hurt? Are you coughing? Aches? Chills? It’s a really horrid cold.

Oh really? I never noticed.

But, by the magic of technology, on Friday when there were meetings to attend and work to be done… I could do it from home. Sick day? Pshaw

So Clapotis #2 has gotten quite a bit of attention the last few days. It’s almost up to the 40% finished that I optimistically estimated when I added it to the progress bars in the right-hand sidebar. In reality, it was probably closer to 15% complete. I did do something smart when I started this project (wonders will never cease). I bought 6 skeins of yarn. The increases were worked with one skein. The plan is to work the straight part using 4 skeins. Then, when there is just one skein left, I’ll work the decrease section. So I have no idea how many repeats of the pattern I’ll actually do, but I know I’ll have enough yarn.

Based on the length of the 2-1/2 skeins I’ve currently knit into it, I’m estimating that it’s going to be between 66″ and 72″ when complete. I wanted a big wrap to take to work, where sometimes it’s just as cold in summer as it is in winter. Looks like this is going to be big enough!

Maybe 5 skeins would have been sufficient? 🙄

I present to you, gentle reader, the first finished object of 2007 — Mountain Blueberry Socks.

I used Mountain Colors Bearfoot yarn in colorway Mountain Twilight. In reality it’s a deep, rich mix of purples, deep blues and just a bit of a purpley chocolate. My camera does not play well with these colors and this is the best I could do. The picture in no way represents the beauty of this yarn. It was nice to knit with, too — very soft and cozy.

I did take this pic outside so I would have natural light. See on the bare branches of my Japanese maple? Yeah… that’s frost. It was cold, cold, cold this morning (by Portland standards). I shivered in the cold as I stood outside in cotton pants, a sweatshirt and sockless feet inside a pair of clogs, taking pictures of socks draped across a bare bush. It’s OK. My neighbors are used to my eccentric ways.

This pair of socks was knit for a colleague.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot (60% Superwash Wool, 25% Mohair, 15% Nylon/ 100g, 350yds per skein) in colorway Mountain Twilight — allmost all of one skein.
• Needles: Knitpicks Classic circulars, US#1 (2.5mm).
• Pattern: Blueberry Waffle stitch, used with my own standard sock pattern.
• Techniques used:
  • Knit toe-up, two at a time, on double circulars.
  • I used the Magic Cast On.
  • The heel flap is worked in Eye of Partridge stitch. I added garter stitch edges.
  • The cuff is 1×1 ribbing.
  • Kitchener (grafted, tubular) bind-off.

The sun made a brief appearance today and the light was just right to take this picture. The Downpour socks are posing on my wisteria, bare in the winter chill. The colors are perfect to set off the stripy gray and brown and taupe of the yarn. It’s fitting that these were knit during the wettest November on record in Portland.

And look! No pooling! It’s a miracle. The stripes do get thinner over the gussets, but it’s not unattractive. The stripes are much wider on the ankles than on the feet, even though there is the same number of stitches around and my gauge remained constant. The only difference is that the ankles are ribbed all the way around.

They are a little shorter than I usually like to make socks. But since I knit until I ran out, it’s as long as they can be.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Socks That Rock ( 100% Superwash Merino/ 4.25 oz, 350yds per skein) in colorway Downpour — all of one skein.
• Needles: Knitpicks Classic circulars, US#1 (2.5mm).
• Pattern: My own toe-up ribbed guy’s socks.
• Techniques used:
  • I used the Magic Cast On.
  • I used heel stitch on the heel flap.
  • The top of the foot and the ankle are knit in K3P1 ribbing.
  • Not thinking what I was doing, I missed on the heel stitch and ended up with the ridges matching up to the purl stitches in the ribbing. I decided I liked how it looked – it made the ribbing stand out – and when I started the K1P1 ribbing at the top I offset it from the ribbing on the leg.
  • When I started the ribbing on the toe, I started with the purl stitches in the middle first and then each row I started a new purl rib at the next spot away from the center. So the start of the ribbing follows the curve of the toe, if that makes sense.

It’s not a good idea, it turns out, to pose socks or other knitted items amongst roses, even though the drying rose hips looks so cheery. Roses, it turns out, have thorns and thorns can snag yarn (and fingers) and lead to time spent carefully rearranging loops of yarn. Just saying.

I have started the next pair of socks. You may note from the progress meters that they are chartreuse. I am saving pics for later posts. I gotta have something left over for blog fodder!

hpny knits asks:

I LOVE your snow video. How did you do that (post it)? its great.

I took the film clip with my camera, which stores video as an .avi file. I converted the .avi to an .flv, reduced its size, and uploaded it. Then I used Joshua Eldridge’s Flash Video Player plugin for WordPress to display it in the little flash player.

It took me about 10000 times as long to figure out how to do it as it did to write it down in the above paragraph. You may have noticed a couple of days where there was a dearth of blogging? Picture me, seated at my desk, swearing…. I know I can get this blasted thing to work!

Finally, I saw this at ~Kristie’s blog, and I just had to post my results because they were so right on!

Christmas Elf Name My Christmas Elf Name is Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com