For far too long I have not been able to post. Not because I’ve been too busy, although that has contributed. No… the latest WordPress upgrade rendered me incapable of actually saving anything I wrote.

If you visited over the last week or so, you may have noticed that sometimes things looked different. Sometimes there were features missing. Sometimes there were whole chunks of PI missing. Sometimes nothing worked at all. There was nobody I could call because… I’m my own webmaster. I will spare you the long, sad tale of sleepless nights spent slaving over the keyboard, frantically searching for an answer; the countless plugins deactivated / upgraded / reactivated only to be trashed; the numerous discussion groups combed for answers; the multiple configurations tried on my local desktop that worked fine, only to be hosed (technical term) when uploaded to where everyone else could see it. Late Friday night I found the answer: Move from PHP4 to PHP5 on my host’s web server. All things magically began to work again. Posts could be saved without the dreaded blank, white screen appearing (think Window’s Blue Screen Of Death, only worse). Ahhhhhhhhh … sleep

In the midst of the panicked frenzy upgrading a few new or modified features were added. Nicer Archives, the plugin that served me faithfully (with a few tweaks) since WP 1.2 days, finally gave up the ghost (RIP). There’s a new expandomatic archives listing in the History tab. Click on the years and months and it drops down. Cool, eh? Translate is once again available (click on the flags at the top of the left sidebar). Thought Of The Day and Current Weather are driven by new, and hopefully more stable, engines. How People Get Here is a new word cloud that shows what searches are leading readers here. To avoid banging my head against the wall in despair I took the opportunity to finally update the PI favicon (that’s the little icon that shows up next to the PI name in the browser address). It now actually fits into this theme rather than a very old, long discarded, quite garishly colored scheme. (I really wanted to use a ball of yarn and knitting needles to form the P and the I in the icon. It looked great at 72×72 pixels, but when reduced to 16×16 pixels it became a featureless blob that didn’t look at all like yarn and needles, much less like a P and an I.)

There are some other changes under the covers that you probably won’t notice.

I love WordPress, and certainly the price is right. But free can also be read as virtually unsupported. And sometimes the features that the authors think are really, really cool cause some issues in the general WordPress-using public who are not expecting such sudden changes. WP 2.2 was not supposed to be a major upgrade. sigh I supposed I should be happy that it forced me into a few probably much-needed updates here and there.

Thank you so much, gentle reader, for continuing to visit and comment in my supposed absence. I was listening and watching. And now I’m back.

The pictures are proof that I did get a little knitting time in.

The Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks are up past the heels and heading up the legs. They are posing amidst my Climbing Iceberg rose. It’s nearly time for the annual Rose Festival and everything is in bloom. I really wanted to photo the socks with my Eyepaint rose. But, alas, the bright red of the rose did not add anything to the lovely Walking On The Wild Tide colors. White, fortunately, goes with everything.

Anyway, I worked the heel flap in heel stitch with a garter border. You can sort of see it on the right-hand sock in the picture. I think it fit into the basket theme quite well and looks like it’s lined up nicely with the pattern on the leg. The lower picture is a close-up of the basket weave stitch pattern across the instep. I know it seems sort of un-sockclub-ish to some to use a different pattern. But I’m really happy with the way this stitch works with this yarn. I would not be nearly as happy with the Sock Club pattern, although it is a fine pattern and one I plan to knit with a different yarn.

I am still waiting for the perfect yarn, due in at Tangle any day now, to start the socks for my Sockapalooza 4 sock pal. I have no idea what these socks are going to look like. But I know the yarn will tell me what it wants to be.

[ed 11:12 am PDT] P.S. I almost forgot to mention that there are now a couple of wonderful Magic Cast On videos available on the web. I’ve linked to them in the right-hand sidebar. One, from the kind people at Renaissance Yarns has a voice-over in English, and the other, courtesy of Calcetines Tejidos is in Spanish. Enjoy!

Kristie suggested calling these the Basket Of Spanish Lavendar socks. And Kathy voted for Basket Wave socks. I like both of those suggestions and can’t choose between them, so I am combining and calling these socks the Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks.

Ah… I feel so much better when the socks on my needles gain a name. Silly, I know, but that’s when I know I’m going to actually finish them, and it just feels like all is right with the world.

I thought you might be interested in seeing how the sole side is vaguely striping in a sort of diagonal-ish way. STR, it seems, is never truly random. But I like the way the colors are combining. So — basketweave on left, stockinette on right.

I’m about 1/2 of a pattern repeat away from starting the gusset increases. It will be interesting to see how this yarn reacts over the gussets. I haven’t decided if I should knit the heel turns and flaps from the opposite end of the yarn to not disturb the non-pattern. Or what stitch I should use on the heel. Eye Of Partridge, maybe.

Decisions, decisions.

I’m really having a lot of fun knitting these. Which reminds me that I really had a lot of fun knitting the other pair of basketweave socks. The change I made to the toes on this pair makes for a better fit. And with such a short pattern repeat, it really feels like I’m getting somewhere. So maybe I should knit this stitch pattern more often, eh? But then I’d probably get tired of it. 🙄

And speaking of sock progress . . .

The other day I was minding my own business, knitting away at Tangle, when I heard Alice call from the back room: Judy, do you want to see our new sock yarn?

That’s kind of a silly question, isn’t it?

I will reveal nothing until the yarn actually gets here. But I will say that it’s scrumptious, out of the ordinary, and there’s a colorway that I think will be just perfect for my Sockapalooooza pal. And there may also be a really awesome lime green that might find a home in my collection. Just maybe.

When the yarn is in hand, then I’ll decide what to do with it. We shall see.

I notice that there are a lot of Sockapaloooozers who have already started their socks. Mine will probably be the next pair on my needles. But I have until August 2 to mail them. Tons of time. (famous last words) So the sidebar is now counting down to 08/02/07 instead of Christmas. We’ll see if that keeps me honest.

A survey apparently finds Portland the city with the friendliest drivers. Are they driving on the same roads I do?

P.S. I hope all of you moms out there had a wonderful Mother’s Day. I had breakfast with my former MIL and it was fun. #1 Son is in Canada, but he remembered to call, and that was wonderful, too. Can’t wait to have him home again.

As promised, here is my progress on the socks I’m knitting from the April Rockin Sock Club offering — a new Blue Moon yarn called Silkie Socks That Rock. This colorway is called Walking On The Wild Tide. (Click on the pics for a no-calorie biggy-size.) As you can see, the colors are not flashing or pooling, except in a very general way. I obviously hit just the right gauge for this particular skein.

I am not knitting the April pattern. It was an open mesh pattern, and after swatching it I thought that the negative space competed with the colors. I really wanted something that played up the color without getting lost in it. A simple basket weave did just the trick. I’m afraid these seem fated to become the Seagrass Basket socks. But I’m open to other suggestions.

I am knitting these in my standard sock pattern except with a star toe. I cast on while sitting in a plane, waiting to fly to Portland. I wasn’t happy with the toes and frogged them when I got home, then reknit. I did the increases on the toe every 3rd round instead of every other round, so the toe is longer and fits my foot better than star toes usually do. I am knitting on size US#1 Addi Lace needles.

I’m loving the yarn, loving how it is knitting up, loving the pattern. I can’t wait for the weather to get cold again so I can wear them.

Well… OK… I won’t go that far.

The bumble bees and some of our other native bees were buzzing around while I took this picture of sock toes posing in my Spanish lavender. I didn’t see any honey bees, but the day was growing late.

Too late to get a decent picture of the darker Moose Creek socks. It turns out that sitting on the tarmac in an airplane for hours and hours does lead to lots of time for knitting. I finished the Moose Creek socks while waiting for thunderstorms to clear so my plane could leave Houston.

I used Mountain Colors Bearfoot yarn in colorway Moose Creek. It’s lovely dark chocolates mixed with gold and very deep blues/purples.

I tried to take this pic outside, but thunderstorms are moving in and I had lost the evening light. So I was forced to resort to the winter socks on a chair short. The colors are pretty true, though.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot (60% Superwash Wool, 25% Mohair, 15% Nylon/ 100g, 350yds per skein) in colorway Moose Creek — one skein, and I had a goodly bit left.
• Needles: Addi Lace Needles, US#1 (2.5mm).
• Pattern: Eyelet Lace stitch from Barbara Walker, 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 heel stitch. I often add garter stitch edges, but this time I didn’t.
  • The cuff is 1×1 ribbing.
  • Kitchener (grafted, tubular) bind-off.

Look! I’m still here!

I can’t believe how busy I have been this week. I haven’t blogged. I haven’t read blogs. I haven’t even knit much, although the Moosecreek socks progress in tiny increments. Strangely enough, although they are starting to feel like the socks that never end, I still love them and I do feel like I make progress every time I knit them. The pattern is fairly simple, for all it looks relatively complex, and I only have to pay attention once every 4 rounds. So it is good for TV watching, etc. — if I had time to do that. But I do want to get them finished.

This is the April Rockin’ Sock Club yummy. It’s called Walk The Wild Tide, and it’s a brand new Blue Moon yarn called Silkie — both the name of a chicken, and an indication of the fiber content — 81 % superwash merino, 19% silk. And look at the color! Doesn’t it look like it’s blooming amongst my wisteria? The silk and the wool took the dye differently, causing multi-hued light/dark yarn. And the silk gives that nice silky glow.

The inside of the ball band on my skein said bladder fucus. That made me raise my eyebrows a bit — ‘scuse me? Bladder fu. . . ?!?!?!? But, thanks to Wikipedia, I know that bladder fucus is another name for bladder wrack, also known as that cool seaweedy stuff with the bubbles in the stems that you can pop and not, thankfully, either a swear word or a disease (as though the lovely Blue Moon ladies would either swear or toss diseases around willy nilly on their ball bands). Bladder fucus bears no resemblance to this yarn, however. None. I can positively state that I have never had the desire to fondle bladder wrack.

Once again, though, I don’t think I will be knitting the pattern that came with the yarn. It’s a standard toe-up, flap-and-gusset heel sock. But the stitch used is a YO, P2tog lace — a true lace that is worked on all rows. It makes a very nice bumpy netting that I think would look great with a solid-colored yarn. With this yarn, the lovely colors got lost inside the netting. I swatched it on US#2 and was way off on gauge and not loving it. So I swatched it again on US#1 and got gauge, but still didn’t love the stitch. So I frogged it again and knit a swatch in the same track of the turtle faux cable pattern as the Snake River Socks. This time the pattern got lost inside the colors.

Here I’ve swatched a simple basket-weave pattern I am sort of liking this one. It still has the nice bumpy purls, but there is enough smoothness that the colors pop instead of being lost in the netting holes. What do you think of this idea, gentle reader? I’ve knit basket weave socks, and was pretty happy with them.

The Silkie yarn has been wonderful to knit with. It’s very soft and squooshy. It’s not very tightly twisted, and I was concerned that it would be splitty, but that has not been the case. It slides right off the needles and there’s nary a split in sight. Tough, too. The yarn that I swatch and frogged out 4 times still looks like I just wound it off the hank.

The crocheted doily was made by my Great Aunt. It’s probably around 80 or 100 years old, but I don’t have any way to date it definitely. Nor do I know which of my Great Aunts actually made it. Several of them crocheted. I have quite a few doilies — crocheted, knitted and tatted — and I try to find uses for them here and there.

There won’t be much bloggage this coming week, either. I will be very busy at work — so busy that I will not have computer access because I won’t be actually in the office or at home much. #1 Son is off to parts north for a month, on tour again. They have booked a show on a ferry, and I am dying to hear about that one.

The Persistent Illusion blogiversary is coming up this week. I can’t believe I’ve been at this for 3 years. My first blog post was titled So What Do I Do With A Blog. Sometimes I still wonder. 😆 But I can also answer confidently: I make friends, I meet wonderful people, I learn new things, I join an amazing community of knitters all over the world. Blog content may be spotty at times, but I can’t imagine not doing it at all.

When my brother and I were children — way, way longer than I care to admit — we loved to listen to music. (Still do, of course.) This was back in the days when music meant a jukebox (I’m old enough to remember a cafe that had a jukebox selector at every booth), or the radio, or the record player. It played vinyl records, boys and girls. 8-tracks had not been invented yet, and ipods were not even a dream in Steve Job’s brain.

Mama picked up a couple of folk albums for us — gotta be contemporary, ya know. Our favorite was one called The 3D’s — New Dimensions In Folk Songs. The D’s had set classical poetry to folk. The music was nice and the harmonies were lovely, and we played the thing over and over and over again until I’m surprised we didn’t wear a hole clean through the groove. To this day I can still recite Jabberwocky flawlessly. ( ‘Twas brillig, and the slithey toves. . .) And Charge Of The Light Brigade. (Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. . . – for some reason that’s not found amusing when I quote it in meetings.) And Gunga Din. (You may talk of gin and beer while you’re quartered safe out here. . .) And I will never forget Bess, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair while she waits for her lover, The Highwayman, to come to her by moonlight — though hell should bar the way. That last really made my romantic little heart pound. Oh, how I longed to have a dangerous highwayman come riding for me by moonlight. (I may have also learned to plait love knots into my hair, ahem). Alas that my hair was not black, nor were my eyes. (And the Highwayman and Bess really did not come to a good end.)

At any rate, we listened and listened and listened to those poems until they became old, familiar friends. So imagine my delight when I learned that we needed to memorize 50 lines of poetry for English class the year that I was a Freshman in High School. OK… I wasn’t so thrilled to have to memorize poetry (I was a normal kid). But I was thrilled when I saw that one could either memorize several smaller poems, or get the whole thing over at one whack (and get extra credit besides) by reciting Gunga Din.

The only hard part was to avoid bursting out in song during the chorus.

Something brought the 3D’s to mind not long ago, and I wondered if their album had ever been released on CD, or was downloadable, or otherwise available. And a bit of googling turned it up. One of the D’s has released it. I ordered a copy for myself and a copy for my brother (his b-day prezzy). And I sent an email with a very belated thank you for the A in Freshman English.

Bro, niece Z, #1 Son and myself had dinner last night. I’d made a Have A Groovy Birthday card for Bro, complete with peace signs and smiley faces (gives you an idea of the decade that I was a Freshman). Bro was thrilled with the CD and listened to it in his car all the way home. No word on what niece Z thought about it.

If you want your own copy, you can order it from Phoenix Records on either CD or cassette.

Knitting: I have been super slammed at work, so not much knitting is being done. But I have managed to turn the heels on the Moosecreek socks, and I’m heading up the legs. Rockin’ Sock Club yarn should be coming soon, and a new sock class starts in a couple of weeks. So I need to get these puppies off the needles.

With all of the distraction of moebii, I haven’t done a lot on the Moose Creek socks, but you can see that they are moving along. I have managed to knit my way up to the gussets. I have about two more increase rows to go before turning the heel.

I think about two more. These socks are slightly off my normal gauge and I haven’t bothered to do the math yet.

You will remember, gentle reader, that I started these socks just before the Magical Moebius Festival, where all thought of this pair was banished from my mind, to be replaced by the lovely moebius and other, very cool, socks.

Not that these socks aren’t cool. I love the way that this little lace pattern (the repeat is only 6 stitches by 8 rows) is knitting up. The outside is all textured and bumpy and cushy.

When I first started, I mentioned that Barbara Walker thought the wrong side of this pattern resembled little elephants. I wasn’t so sure, but I hadn’t gotten very far yet.

The left side of the picture is the inside or wrong side. I can see the little elephants now, the lines of knit stitches making their little trunks. Cute little guys, eh?

But on the right side, I still don’t see elephants. The right side looks to me like so many little owlets, peeping out with their wide eyes framed by feathers, each standing on the head of the little owlet below. Can you see that? (be sure to click on the picture for a closer look)

Please tell me I’m not the only one who looks for animals in stitch patterns. 😆

I hope you can see the stitch pattern well enought to see the little animals. I’m finding this yarn very difficult to get good close-ups of. The top picture, with the socks reclining in my little boat basket (that’s what I call it), is pretty close to the actual color. Dark. Dark and rich. Dark chocolate with little touches of milk chocolate and a bit of midnight blue.

If I had one of those amazing, bazillion-pixel cameras with close-up lenses and all, I could probably get a better picture. But then I couldn’t carry my camera around in my purse and madly snap picture everywhere I go. It’s a trade-off.

Note to everyone: I cannot write about the horror at Virginia Tech. My heart goes out to the families and friends of all those involved.