Stitching and Living

Computer Time

My original plan for today was to spend every free minute possible knitting or crocheting. After all, there are at least three projects that need to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. They are all large and two of them have a few parts to them. Instead I took a lot of computer time.

If you don't know me personally, you might not know that I am an organization freak. Everything must have a place and be in its place. The exceptions to this are the spare bedroom which serves as a homeschool and craft room and Munch's room. I can tolerate a bit of clutter in them.

My computer on the other hand has been what I consider a complete mess. Links have been misfiled or double filed; the toolbar has had far too many things on it;  and bookmarks had not been backed up in ages. the list could go on for a bit longer. You get the picture.

I have been gradually cleaning this mess up in the last week. Despite my best efforts progress was slow. This morning I got up early and hit right into it. It is now almost 8pm and it is finally done. The tool bars on my browser have been put in order; many bookmark files have been checked and cleaned out; a lot of dead links have been removed; and the bookmarks file has been backed up. There have even been a few changes made to this blog. 

Somewhere during the course of cleaning out files, I even found a link to one of my all time favorite Firefox Add-ons: Get Mail which informed me that it is now compatible with the current version of Firefox. That was good!

This has been a productive and relaxing day.

Computer Time

My original plan for today was to spend every free minute possible knitting or crocheting. After all, there are at least three projects that need to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. They are all large and two of them have a few parts to them. Instead I took a lot of computer time.

If you don't know me personally, you might not know that I am an organization freak. Everything must have a place and be in its place. The exceptions to this are the spare bedroom which serves as a homeschool and craft room and Munch's room. I can tolerate a bit of clutter in them.

My computer on the other hand has been what I consider a complete mess. Links have been misfiled or double filed; the toolbar has had far too many things on it;  and bookmarks had not been backed up in ages. the list could go on for a bit longer. You get the picture.

I have been gradually cleaning this mess up in the last week. Despite my best efforts progress was slow. This morning I got up early and hit right into it. It is now almost 8pm and it is finally done. The tool bars on my browser have been put in order; many bookmark files have been checked and cleaned out; a lot of dead links have been removed; and the bookmarks file has been backed up. There have even been a few changes made to this blog. 

Somewhere during the course of cleaning out files, I even found a link to one of my all time favorite Firefox Add-ons: Get Mail which informed me that it is now compatible with the current version of Firefox. That was good!

This has been a productive and relaxing day.

Changes

The past few months have been full of changes. Many of these are fiber related. Most of my stash of acrylic  yarns have been given away to a local charity. My stash of cotton  yarns has been gone through, inventoried  and rearranged. I have printed out and filed numerous  patterns.

I have made a few changes here this evening. Links on the page Places I Visit have been up dated. there were several dead links that needed to be handled. I did the same thing with links on the side bars. It is nothing exciting. They were very important changes to me. 

Excited!!

In the scope of life this is a minor thing, but at the moment it is a big issue. My Flickr Photo Album is working. I had to install Java in order to access a Chat Room for a knitting group to which I belong. After doing that, it dawned on me to check to see if that action made a difference on this blog. It did.  the one Photo Album I still have up is now  functioning properly!  I learned something I did not know before today. The next time there is a problem on this order I will double check to see if Java has been installed.

There are new Ballband cloths posted as of today. Take a look at them if you want. The ones I make are fairly small to meet my own needs and wants. The pattern is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. The possibilities are endless, in terms of size and color combinations.

Have a fantastic Day!!

More About Changes

After last night's post about problems with Flickr badges, I did a bit of research on the Flickr forums. It was most interesting and educational. The essence of what I learned is that there is a problem with the code used for the Flash badges. There is also a fix available involving making changes in the code. A lot of times I can handle doing such things, but this one went over my head despite my best efforts to make the appropriate changes.

I have written support at Flcikr requesting help. It is only fair that they recieve the courtesy of me patiently waiting a few days for a response. I am gladly doing this. In the meantime, my hands will be busy with knitting and crocheting. My current plan, if I don't hear from them with a solution in the next day or so, is to make a photo album on Typepad.

In the meatime, there is plenty to keep me busy. :)

Vacation-Yes!

Following the proper procedure set forth by my employer, I requested vacation time two weeks in advance. My request was for two whole weeks, including weekends, one of which is my regularly scheduled one to work.  The  new schedule came out today and it shows I am on vacation after Friday of this week!!

I am so excited! We have been planning this time off for the past month and a half.There is lots of family time planned for fun and household projects. A lot of my free time will be spent completing some UFO's; starting some new projects  and working on both of my active blogs.  There is so much to do and only two weeks to do it. 

Ravelry Link

I finally got around to adding a link to Ravelry to a sidebar here. I have not done so for a few reasons. The main one was my fear of not doing it correctly without a problem. Normally doing something like that is not difficult and this was no exception. It only took a few minutes and very little effort. The hard part was deciding to do it and getting started. I am glad I did.

Knitting/Crocheting and Blogging Slump

The past month has seen me in the worst blogging and knitting slump in ages. I am also way behind in email. There has just been a lot of activity in my life, most of which is not exciting. It took a couple of weeks  for my household to fully recover from the flu that hit us in February. Somewhere along the way I have had a flare up of arthritis in a knee which was injured as a teenager. It tends to happens a couple of times a year and never fails to wipe me out. This time was no exception. As of yesterday, the knee was feeling much better.

For the first time in ages, a computer time slump and a knitting/crocheting slump have hit at the same time. I am finally starting to snap out of both of them in the past few days. Yeah!! I will be spending time this weekend doing an assortment of knitting/crochet  and computer related activities. I have some ideas, but will have to see how much gets done.

Have a great weekend and a Happy Easter!

A Passion

It seems like I have disappeared from this blog. I have been busy taking care of working on one of my passions which is almost anything related to dish, wash and face cloths. The truth is, it is an addiction. At one time in the past few weeks there were at least five cloths on the needles. I am now down to three. Some of them are freebies and others are purchased.  One of them sort of does not count since there will normally be one in my knitting bag for those times when I am either a passenger in a vehicle or when I am out and have waiting time. There is a pile of them waiting to be photographed for sharing.  That is going to have to wait until my day off in the middle of the week in a few days.

The other project which has been consuming my time is working on one of my other blogs: Dish and Wash Cloth Mania . It started out innocently enough at a different location. We had little or no money at the time and my household was running low on dish cloths that were not worn out. I did what an computer knowledgeable crafter would do and turned to the internet for help. That was about a year and a half ago. The small blog has become a bit larger to say the least. I have discovered lots of patterns, both free and for sale,  by fantastic designers out there on the internet. In the past few weeks much of my time has been spent updating that blog.  My motivation for saying this is not  is not to  get you to that site, but merely to tell you how my time has  been spent.

There is  more to  be said on this topic, but  it will have to wait. There are  other responsibilities  calling for my attention.

Have a great day!

Life and Knitting

It has been almost two weeks since I last posted here.
Life has been busy but  not exciting.Here is some of what has been going on:

• I continue to knit and crochet in odd moments.
• A few dishcloths have been made. Some will stay here while others will go to assorted new homes.
• Work continues on the Comfortghan for a friend at work. It is going very slowly.
• My family and I have been diligently cleaning out and rearranging the basement of our home. This has consumed the past couple of weekends I have not worked for my employer.
• Work is going through a super busy phase. There are days when I come home so tired it is all I can to have a snack combined with family time and go to bed. Sleep takes over.
• This is allergy season for my family. It saps our energy. We sleep, try to eat healthy foods  and force a lot of fluids to keep going.
• As a person with heart disease, exercising is a must. Walking daily, or at least trying to, is a priority. I can now walk almost a mile before needing to stop and catch my breath. My goal is to be walking five miles daily by my next appointment with the cardiologist.
• We homeschool. Family time and teaching/learning time are a high priority and as such dominate life in my household.
• I belong to some online email groups and have another blog. Mail is way behind in all of these areas. I feel badly about it, but am trying to catch up.

These are the things that have taken my time and attention from this blog. It is life and it is important.