It’s a good random day. I’ve been neglecting the blog again and have many little things I want to update.

1) My brother’s gmail account was hacked yesterday. He was able to resolve it, but he wrote a really clear and concise post about what information one needs available and the process he had to go through to reclaim his address. It’s a really good read for anyone who uses gmail.

2) Mikey headed back to Cali on Saturday. We had a great couple of weeks while he was visiting and I miss him tremendously. Just gotta figure out when I’ll drag him back for another trip. Silly work is eating up all my time.

3) We had a great weekend with friends at Holiday World and Beech Bend while he was here. Some of our friends ran into some snags that soured our exclusive ride time a bit at Holiday World, but we still had fun. I didn’t take any photos this year, but I did manage to knit most of a pair of socks that weekend.

4) That pair of socks, I just closed the toe on the second one tonight. They will be going in the mail to my mom soon. Simple stockinette socks out of KnitPicks Felici in the Gelato colorway. They knit up fast and I really like how they came out. Since I finished them tonight, they are also technically my first completed pair for this year’s 52 pair plunge.

5) Socks, socks, socks. I also joined the summer of socks this year. And I’m still knitting up that design in honor of my cousin. And I’ve set a goal for self to finish all the Sock Madness 1 & 2 sock patterns that I haven’t done yet before next spring’s Sock Madness commences. And I’m hoping to submit a design or two for SM3 as well. And wearing a skirt today, I’m really wishing I had a pair of handknit knee socks. Socks, Socks, Socks!

6) My CSA starts next week, my birthday is next week, and I’m headed to Cedar Point and Waldameer Park this weekend for some more coaster time with friends. I will have my camera and a sock or three with me this time, so look for some more photos soon.

7) Another contest won, I guess I’m on a roll lately. Knitsaur requested hand sizes in her comments and drew a name in exchange for that info. I won a skein of Silky Wool.

8 ) While the rest of us were in Indiana and Kentucky, Craig took the RainbowHappySock all over New York and into Quebec. He has a ton of photos, and even wrote up the Quebec part of his trip report in French, but I’m going to be a little lazy and just put together a big mosaic of his photos from this trip. It even witnessed his daughter’s 500th coaster.

This week is kind of crazy and the knitting needles have actually not been picked up since Sunday. I will resume knitting on our road trip tomorrow though, and in the meantime, Tandaina tagged those of us who know her true identity with a meme so, filler content it is until I get back from Holiday World with a finished sock or three.

What were you doing five years ago?

5 years ago today, I was probably riding a coaster. 5 years ago, in general, I was still working and living in the same place, different area of the department work-wise, but still the same place. I wasn’t knitting yet and I was embarking on the first crazy year of several with the coaster hobby.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

1) Work

2) Packing for this weekend

3) Laundry

4) Making sure the kitties are sufficiently fed, watered and littered for our 4-days away.

5) Calling my mom, haven’t talked to her yet this week.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1) Chocolate

2) Chocolate

3) Diet Soda

4) Ice Cream

5)  Chocolate

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

1) Make several family members and close friends financially independent

2) Buy a house

3) Buy my parents a house

4) Quit my job

5) Come up with a completely different life plan

What are five of your bad habits?

1) Nail Biting

2) Caffiene

3) Over sleeping/staying up too late

4) Forgetting sunscreen

5)

What are five places where you have lived?

1) My parents house

2) College campus - dorms

3) College campus - other dorms  (I think I lived in 4 different dorm buildings while in college)

4) Teeny Tiny College apartment

5) Decent sized new 2-bedroom apartment for the last 8 years.

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1) Cemetery Groundskeeper (I pushed a lawnmower for a couple summers)

2) Technical Services Receptionist

3) Temp data entryist for an insurance company

4) Network Technician

5) System Developer

Tags: If you want it, it’s yours.

Thank you for the wonderful response to the blogiversary post! It’s amazing how a few little links and a teeny bit of shameless self promotion can spawn so many great commenters to come out of the woodwork. It’s by far the most response I’ve had to any one post on the blog to date. There are still a couple weeks to post (I set my drawing date the day after the Harlot is in Ann Arbor not thinking to look at the calendar and realize that that is still another two weeks out, but it’ll give some stragglers a chance to pop over and discover it in the mean time.) I’ve found some great new blogs to read through those comments too.

I haven’t really knit much since I finished up my hat. I signed up for the wee tiny sock swap on YarnMiracle’s blog and have been picking at a teeny sock, and I may pick up another project to pick at here and there in the mean time while we wait for the next round of Sock Madness to start.

Speaking of sock madness, specs for round two were posted today. STR, US1 needles. I used STR the last round for my zombies, but they didn’t specify varigated vs semi-solid this time, so I’m leaning towards using either the Fairgrounds colorway or the Knitty colorway. I’ll have a few more days to sort that out though, it looks like the pattern won’t drop in our inboxes until sometime on April 1st.

Instead of knitting, I’ve been working on getting the apartment back to some level of almost-orderly, and I’ve been experimenting with some advertising stuff behind the scenes on the blog. The site I signed on with seems to draw a lot of webcomics, but there are a handful of crafty advertisers poking around there and it makes me smile a little when they out bid the comics for my little ad spots. I’m trying very hard to keep the ads small and unobtrusive and off to the side or down in the footer. Let me know if they get annoying or out of hand.

I also finally replaced my ancient cell phone. It was falling apart, wouldn’t hold a charge for more than one call, and was making a clicking noise in the background when I talked. So yesterday when the screen display started getting flaky, it was time. My new one is an LG Scoop. It’s nice having a functional phone again and it’s so much newer than the old one that I have all sorts of new gadgets built in that are going to be fun to experiment with. I’ve finally joined the era of the camera phone. It just took me like 3 years to get here.

 And I’ve had another finished dishcloth laying around that’s ready for it’s day in the limelight. This one’s even more abstract than the ferris wheel was, but it should sort of look like steel coaster track.

Click here for the pdf file.

My blogiversary this year is falling today, on Easter. Happy Easter! Whether you celebrate the religious events of this day or you’re all about chocolate bunnies and eggs or it’s just another Sunday, enjoy!

It was today two years ago that I started my blog. I’ve also mentioned once or twice, that I started the blog within a couple weeks of my mom’s worst accident to date. She fell and hit her head and suffered major bleeding around her brain. She also somehow survived the whole thing with minimal side effects. She still has a bunch of medical issues unrelated to that accident, but she’s a fighter and she’s still here and I’m grateful.

Of course, it’s a blogiversary, I have to have a contest. Leave a comment on this post before April 12th and you’ll be eligible. So, what’s worth your comments? Well, for the knitters I have two prizes. Both will win a copy of my Kiss That Frog Mittens pattern plus their choice of two colorways of either Paton’s Classic or Cascade 220 to make a pair. As for the non-knitters, I pretty much expect them to be comprised of my coaster geek friends mostly (and I may figure out an alternate prize if the winner isn’t one of my coaster geek friends). So, the non-knitter prize is a set of one each of the amusement park themed dishcloths that I’ve designed knit in the colors of their choice including the three I haven’t quite gotten around to finishing up yet (a total of 6 knit dishcloths).

I also have a new FO to show off. I suppose it’s my Easter hat since I finished it last night. Shedir from Knitty in the called-for yarn, Rowan Calmer. I love it, it fits pretty well, but its a little too deep for my head. If I make it again, I’ll leave out a cable repeat on the sides. It was a nice not-sock interlude between sock madness rounds. I actually had started it before Christmas, and just picked it up and added a couple rows here and there over the last week or so. Fairly quick for the most part, and really lovely finished. It’s just hard to take photos of the top of my head!

A bit of randomness today.

1) I’ve had a membership on wheresgeorge.com for years (at least since ‘03 or ‘04) and every once in a while if I remember that it’s there (like twice a year) I’ll mark up the bills in my wallet and add them to the site. I’d never received any Where’s George marked bills in all the time I’d known about the site. And yet in the last month I’ve had two bills find their way into my wallet. I’m not sure where I got the first one, I just noticed it as I was cleaning out my purse one day and logged it in. The second one I got last Friday in the cafeteria at work and spent again getting dinner on Sunday from a local Chinese place.

2) Those trekking socks I started last month are slowly coming along, I’m working on the second sock now. Random seemed like a good time to photo them and get the project added to Ravelry.

3) Book MeMe… Tandaina and her mom both tagged me for this one.
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences.Post the next three sentences:

I’m sitting next to a bookshelf full of books, so I just grabbed one at random (since it’s a random day). So, from The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank…

“Walk me to the door?” she says to me.

As soon as we’re out on the landing, she says, “Don’t tell me to go easy on him, Nina.” She looks right at me, into my eyes. “He comes flying in here like Supersperm. And we’re all supposed to congratulate him.”

LOL, apparently I chose the right book for an absurdly out of context snippet. I’m not going to tag this one as I think it’s made it’s way through the knit blog world two or three times over, but if you haven’t done it, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

4) This weekend I finished up the most embarrassingly long lingering project (I have other long lingering projects, just none that I’m as embarrassed to admit sat for so long) in my basket. I had a scrap ball-band dishcloth I started way back in July. I got it mostly finished shy of maybe 10 rows and transfered it off the needles to use them for something else. And it sat just like that until Friday night when I picked it back up and finished it. The other issue with this one, since I did each strip in a different color, there were about a million ends to weave in. I like how it came out now that it’s done, and it was a decent use of a few scraps, but that’s far too much effort for a dishcloth.

5) One thing that crossed my mind while brainstorming pattern ideas… it’s hard to come up with a good way to chart and/or dishcloth other carousel animals without it just looking like the silhouette of an impaled animal.

6) Another thing from the brainstorming, it’s also hard to think of other potential animal motifs for other possible split-palm mitten ideas without ending up with an ass in one hand.

7) That doesn’t mean I’m not trying, nor am I restricting myself with those constraints. Although, my mom wants monkey mittens now that I’ve done frogs. I have an idea, I’m just trying to figure out the best way to execute it. She also wants a hat and more doll clothes. As soon as the prospect of potentially making a little money slipped into the picture, she is all over the idea of “helping” me come up with designs now. That’s one thing we’ve always differed on… she’s always looking for a way to support her hobbies financially with the results of the hobbies, I’m a little more cautious stepping into that arena. I tend to withdraw once obligation starts to step in, however, the pattern thing is a little less hands-on and I’m hoping the “obligations” are within reason and won’t detract from the hobby itself.

8 ) I set up a separate Patterns page here and I’ve got the Carousel Horse, Coaster Rider and Inspired Scarf available in pdf form both there and on Ravelry. I still need to go back and add the pdf links to the original posts for the Carousel Horse and the Inspired Scarf though.

9) I have several more free dishcloth patterns in the works. Four of them relate to the amusement park theme of the first two and none feature impaled animals. I’m thinking I may try to work those up and release them one per week leading up to my blogiversary, but I reserve the right to change my mind if it starts feeling too workish. I have some other ideas brewing for other things as well (like those monkey mittens), but with everything getting crazy in March and April at work plus some other things brewing behind the scenes here, dishcloths seem like a safe and easy bet for now.

10) I signed up for the second year of Sock Madness… I’m not as convinced that I’ll get as far as I did last year. I think I’m overloading my March already.

Are you a card person or not? I’ve skipped a few years, but I generally enjoy sending holiday cards. I don’t do a big huge letter or any sort of newsletter and some years the cards barely get signed, but it’s one of those little traditional things I like to do every year.

It gets me onto some of the family card lists that my cousins aren’t necessarily included on. It makes me feel like a grown up (as often as I try to deny my adulthood, I still have that little kid-ish need to prove that I’m grown up in random silly ways and holiday cards are one of my random ways). It connects me to friends who have moved away or with whom I don’t keep in as close of contact as I should. And since I know that my mom can’t necessarily get her cards out every year, it feels like I’m helping to fill in when she can’t finish as many cards as she’d like to. So, every year I find and/or make cards and send to about 50 households. And this year I’m planning on getting myself some moo cards to put in the envelopes and (scary thought) bring this blog into the general consciousness of the people with whom I share some holiday cheer.
I went through and updated my recipient list this week and I always have to limit myself when I get to adding names to my list. That got me thinking about bloggers (doesn’t every thought lead back to bloggers, or is it just me?) I love my blog and while I’m starting to forge acquaintances and friendships with some of you through comments and contests and exchanges, the whole comment & reply conversations always seem a little fragmented to me. I’m not sure who I would or would not automagically add to my holiday card list. So, I’m going to throw this idea out there and see if there’s any interest and follow the model of the Pay it Forward post from yesterday and let you all decide for me.

Spread some holiday cheer

I will send a holiday card during the month of December to the first 5 people who leave a comment on this post requesting to receive a holiday card. I would love to get a card in return but that’s not necessary. However, I would ask that you make the same offer on your blog, spread some holiday cheer and send cards to a few of your readers as well.  I don’t intend for this to be some extravagant gift exchange. My crafty resources are spread thin this time of year but I can definitely put a few extra cards in the mail and share some of my abundance of holiday spirit. 

Also as an aside (beyond the scope of the snippet above), I’ll probably be ordering more than the 5 extra of my cards, so if there are already 5 comments here and you’re still interested feel free to comment anyway. I’d like to see the ‘5′ number work it’s way through the blog-world if by some miracle of blogginess this actually catches on, but I’ll send as many cards as I have to exhaust my supply. I may not always write a lot in my cards, but I do try to be a bit matchy-matchy and send all the same card each year and exhaust that year’s supply so I don’t have to worry about sending a repeat card to the same person the next year. That’s about as close to tricking myself into being organized as I can get. The holiday season has a bit of that mystical fantasy charm to it, so if I can trick myself into pretending that I’m an organized person for one month out of the year it just adds to the fantasy. Fortunately, I have a couple more days before that month begins so I can finish the prep work necessary to fool myself into that belief.

I admit, I’ve been kinda chasing this particular meme-esque thing around the blogs for a few days trying to catch one, and today I caught it on KT’s blog.

I’ve been contemplating contesty things to put something up for NaBloPoMo, and this sorta fits that criteria too. So, here it is.

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days. That is my promise. The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

One more week of this NaBloPoMo thing and I’m kinda looking forward to a few days to self-edit and come up with interesting relevant posts instead of all these filler posts. The sick fog is lifting now and today is the best I’ve felt in a couple weeks. Hopefully that means the meds are working and I’ll get back to something resembling normal soon.

I’m giving myself this week to get the living room and kitchen in shape so I can get my tree up next weekend. I won’t have anyone over for the holidays this year, so it’s not “necessary” but it’s one of those things I love to do every year just for me. It is a bit of a pain to keep the kitties out of the tree, but I like my holiday decorations and my tree and if nothing else it may be the incentive I need to get the needles flying for the final pre-holiday push.

I’ve made it 15 days into this experiment so far. Unfortunately this will be another short, photoless post. The head/chest cold that’s been trying to attack me all month decided to finally jump up and latch on with full force today. At least a day of sniffling and trying to keep my lungs inside my chest on the couch has led to plenty of knitting and Tivo catchup. Dad’s sock is halfway down the foot and the second Monkey will get it’s heel tonight.

First, I neglected to acknowledge Veterans Day yesterday. To any and all who do or have served, thanks.

Second, I feel like I need to put something resembling a real post in today since last night’s was such a cop out. I’m trying to avoid the “Look, it’s the same sock only now it has a heel” post that the knitting is giving me though. So, I think I may delve into either meme territory or just some in-depth and/or history for the next few posts. If there’s anything anyone is curious about or would like to see me extrapolate on, fire up the comments. If this is the dullest thing ever let me know that too.

I do feel like I’ve not given the coaster hobby as much focus in the blog as it has in my life. I’ve alluded to it, I’ve mentioned some of the trips and events at a fairly high level and I posted my wooden coaster poll ballot for this year last week, but I’ve kinda kept the coaster stuff to the forums I frequent and haven’t brought as much of it to the blog. I’m not really even sure where to start extrapolating on it though (which is probably why I haven’t given it much focus). Anything in particular anyone wants to know or know more about?

And for just that little bit of extra random, I am going to resort to a meme. Sock related natch, and it appears to have originated back at this blog.

Sock Meme!

1. What’s your favorite sock yarn? (please note that the word ‘yarn’ is singular. Just pick one. I know it’s hard.)

I’m still in what I would dub the experimental phase. I’ve knit close to 20 pair, but I don’t think any two have been in the same yarn yet. If I have to choose, I’d go with Sundara’s sock yarn. The socks I made with hers are one of my favorite pair, and I have another colorway that I haven’t knit up yet.

2. What’s your favorite type and brand of sock needle?

I’m pretty partial to my crystal palace bamboo dpns at this point. I’ll probably give some of the knitpicks dpns a shot next year. I’ve never really had any interest in 2-circs or magic loop although I’ll probably get around to learning eventually.
3. Do you knit your socks toe up, cuff down, or sideways?

I prefer cuff-down. I actually really enjoy grafting, and I have an easier time figuring out heel and toe placement. I like the idea of toe up, but they just feel slower to me.
4. Do you knit both socks at once or just one at a time?

One at a time.
5. What’s your favorite toe and why?

I like a regular wedge decreased at the sides grafted toe.
6. Favorite heel?

I prefer a heel flap and I’ve enjoyed the visual and reinforced nature of an eye-of-partridge pattern to a flap. Short row heels don’t seem to fit me right and feel fidgety to execute.
7. Do you prefer plain or patterned socks?

It depends on the yarn. I love handpainted and variegated yarns, but I love a good patterned sock too. I love the patterns that can handle both a complex yarn and a little interest in the sock, but I stockinette is great for mindless knitting too.
8. Who do you knit the most socks for?

Myself, although mom’s collection is slowly growing.
9. Do you darn your socks? If not, what do you do with them?

Mom has walked a hole into one of her pair, and I’ve made some attempts to mend them. I fortunately haven’t needed to mend any of mine yet, but until they’re too disintegrated to fix, I’ll mend what I can.
10. Do you only wear handknit socks?

I have enough pair that if I kept on top of the laundry I could only wear handknit socks. When I did my big closet purge, I pared down to a very limited number of non-knit though. I have a few solid trouser socks because I don’t have any desire to knit myself plain black socks, and I kept a few pair of novelty socks and athletic socks, but I’m otherwise right there with mostly handknit socks.
Bonus question: What pattern, if any, is your basic “I-just-need-a-pair-of-socks” sock pattern based on? Do you keep it written down or memorized?

I have developed my own memory for stockinette socks on both size one and size two needles that I can pull from memory. I’ve also committed the jaywalker and monkey sock patterns to memory and have pulled both of those into my arsenal of standards on a couple occasions.

Oh, and to keep this really random…  Craft linked to this really neat blog on their blog today, and I’ve been entranced by it all afternoon.