The case of the missing yarn

Jim and I arrived home late last night to discover that a beautiful shawl I have been knitting out of lace weight mohair that looks like cobweb was on the floor in a cat-related incident, with the yarn leading out of the living room, though the kitchen, and into the bedroom. Unlike the last time they thought this would be a good project to eat, where the yarn trail led to yarn that had been wrapped around the papasan chair, under the bed and back out again, this yarn tail ended in a bitten wet end. The ball of yarn is nowhere to be found. The cats have managed to make about 100 yards of mohair disappear. I know all their usual stolen yarn hiding places, and all of them are empty. Curiouser and curiouser.

I have been working on the Sunrise Circle Jacket like crazy, but it still looks to me like I'm in the armpit. The Yarn Harlot started making the same sweater, which is awesome, except that in one day or so of being deathly ill, she is in the same spot that I am after two months, which means...I am slow. I guess a picture would be helpful, but I'm still in a text-only phase. It's just so much work to upload photos!! What a terrible professional blogger I'd be.

Jim and I got a server up and running today. I can't even believe it. He spent the better part of four hours in front of a command line, and it's just about ready for me to work my Koha magic. I think. For all that I'm the resident Systems Librarian, there are days where computers make no sense to me, and today was one of them. I like a GUI. Is that too much to ask?

Library parties

= FUN.

Nerds.

So Jim asked me, "Can you think of anything more nerdy than being excited to go into work on your day off, on a weekend, to install and configure an open source server setup?" I said, "If I do that and then stay for knitting group." I have just been informed that the nerd police are going to pull me over for speeding, having posted 4 times in 3 days.

I am going to try and set up a Ubuntu server to run Koha at work, as an experiment. Our web catalog is not the best, and the ILS we use is not particularly robust. We've outgrown it as a library, and some of the other options are quite pricey. I'm not sure I can make Koha work the way I'd like it to, but it definitely has some great features that would be a huge improvement over our current system. I'm going to try and play around with it in hopes of giving the library some real options when we choose to migrate to another system.

I haven't actually done any knitting today, which is unusual, but Jim considers all the time I spent on Ravelry to be "virtual knitting." I did add pictures to my Ravelry account!! Including this cute nautilus made from this pattern, but subbing sock yarn for worsted.

Knitting PostScript

Also, have you seen this method for a left-leaning decrease?? It's working well on my Sunrise.

Lots o'knitting

Franklin is sitting on my lap helping me write this. Or stalking the cursor. Choose your story.

I started the Sunrise Circle Jacket by Kate Gilbert (love her stuff!!) while on our honeymoon. I figured I'd have time sitting in the north woods of Maine to work those crazy line by line increases. Stupidly I started with the back and only got that one piece done while actually on the honeymoon. I am now working on my first sleeve, and have just this evening gotten to the part where the increases start to make that gorgeous circle. That's right, I made it to the armpit.

In other news, my wrists hurt and the heat is not on. Which means I need to learn continental so I can switch up my techniques and give my wrists a break, and check in with my landlady again. After I fill up my hot water bottle.

Long Time, No Blog, Part Deux

I was planning to blog regularly, and then I went a took an 8 month hiatus. Yikes! At this rate, I'll never become a famous knit blogger! It's a good think I have no plans to do this professionally.

I counted recently and had 12 projects on the needles. 12! That number is about half what I was expecting, but about 4 times what I think I need. Jim has taken over a pair of fingerless mitts that I loaned him, so I'm going to make him his own Dashing, and perhaps a new pair of mittens out of the new Patons Classic Wool Tweeds. I just love Classic Wool. Hands down, if I were stuck on a desert island and for some reason had access to only one type of yarn, it would be Classic Wool. Given the unlikely even that anyone would give me yarn should I become stranded somewhere, I always have a project in my bag. Sometimes two.

As far as tidbits mentioned in my February post, I graduated library school, got a great job as a librarian, got married, and didn't post any pictures! Graduation was a relief, I'm working at my dream job, the wedding was fabulous, married life is bliss, and my camera batteries are dead. w00t!11!!11!1