oh, the carnage

Posted on Posted in food and garden, lace/shawls, projects, Uncategorized

for the last few weeks, our days have gotten increasingly longer and warmer, and sunny, spring weather has prevailed. trees and flowers budded and bloomed all over the place. on tuesday, temperatures here reached a positively balmy 80 degrees. yesterday morning, in fact, it was about 60-ish when i got up.

by the time i went to class wednesday afternoon, it was 25 degrees and snowing. these are my daffodils now.

don’t even ask to see the tulips—it’s just too heartbreaking. they are david’s pride and joy. hopefully, since only a few had just barely budded-out, we will still get blooms. i’d hate for this to be their fate

the temperature has stayed solidly in the 20s since last evening, but spring is still coming, i can feel it. i’m an optimist, after all.

i’ve done hardly any knitting in the past two days; in fact, i think maybe on tuesday i did none.
i KNOW!!
i’ve been busy with work; the project that ended a few weeks ago? it came back.

apparently, it was so well-received in the state for which it was developed, that they decided to make a national product for it. oh joy.

so a big bundle of edits was plopped on my desk late last week—you know, all those little thingies they wish they could’ve changed or fixed by the deadline. it’s good though—we need to eat, and this work suits me. but it does use up a lot of valuable knitting time . . .

since the edits are sparse but pervasive, i have to do a lot of printing and updating mostly. which means there is time every 15 minutes or so to knit a needleful of stitches on my desk sock. now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but consider:

4 books times 3 version of each = 12 books
12 books times 12 units in each = 144 documents
144 documents to PDF and update pages = 288 times i have to wait and can knit a needleful
288 divided by 3 needles per round = 96 rounds
96 rounds divided by 9 rounds per inch = 11 inches of sock!

well, maybe i read a few blog in there too.

but the potential—mind boggling, isn’t it? i mean if you’re on a sock deadline or something. of course, if you work in an office (which i do not) you’d have a lot of ‘splaining to do.
(i realize i’m outing myself here, but i think my co-workers know by now that i knit. he-he. just a little).
which iritates me, because at the office, you can often read blogs while you print and update, and NOT have to explain it.

but yesterday was also my day to teach in the afternoon, so i got a bunch done on my stepSox

(i’ll never have stepchildren, but i love that i have stepSox . . .)
we are ready for heel. oh, and about the tree scum sock—it’s been sitting patiently waiting for me to get back to it while i finish the starlight pattern, and i will. maybe even tonite; we may even have a siting of it tomorrow . . . i think the off-time has been good for it. it might even start begging to be knitted by late this evening.

not that i think it ought to; i just think it should get over itself. ok, i lost my mind for a split second and forgot to introduce it to the harlot. life is hard, what can i say?

now on a more serious note, for those of you who emailed me with interest and comments of your own about the knit visualizer software, you will be happy to know that we are not being ignored.

for the past couple of days, i’ve been having a wonderful exchange with nancy, the developer, about problems and triumphs of the software. she is working hard on a new version and is eager for input, good and bad. and she helped me fix a tricky bug in the saving process that was driving me mad.

i think that overall, this is a good product in the making, and certainly is well-supported. nancy also has other cool products for sale on her site, including a storage box for DPNs that is pretty clever.
thanks nancy!

and that pattern? it’s pretty shipshape as we speak, and should be available tomorrow. all i have left to do is proofread the rows against the charts, and i’m done. i’ve knit the text instructions, and then i’ve kit from the charts as well—all should be good.

that said, i have to confess that this is when i get a knot i my stomach—since it is impossible to know if i wrote every instruction clearly enough, and nearly impossible to catch every typo, i dread the release of a shawl pattern as much as i eagerly look forward to seeing it knit by others. but i trust the process, and so another one will be sent out into the world.

and then? well, then it’s time to start again. spring is here indeed.

21 thoughts on “oh, the carnage

  1. Hooray! I am so looking forward to the shawl pattern. Your work load sounds daunting indeed! The stepsox is taking precedence over the tree scum? There may be a revolt.

  2. Oh those poor poor daffodils and tulips… my heart breaks too…

    Whoa, knit visualizer… the things I learn on your website!

    Good luck with work, Anne!

  3. Oh, no! Daffodils are my favorite – the carnage is so hard to see!

    I’m planning to knit your shawl – I’m pretty good with figuring out patterns, and I’ll let you know if I find any typos 🙂 *Can hardly wait!!!*

  4. Your poor flowers! Must be some weather you’re having.
    I’m sure your shawl pattern will be wonderful. Of course, I bet you could find a handful of test knitters to ease your stomach pains:) Do you have a knitting group where people would look over your patterns?

  5. The potential 11 inches of sock is pretty amazing indeed! I wish I was better at taking advantage of all those little moments, I would get to knit much more…
    (and now, after that lovely evening with you, I’m finally shutting down the computer and going to bed!) 😉

  6. glad she is listening to you – i am waiting to hear about the upgrade with colour… any idea when it might be coming.

    also, do you find it slow? i find it annoyingly slow to open and save and print. and WISH WISH WISH for keyboard commands – but i love keyboard commands having grown up in DOS you know.

  7. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, all your other patterns worked out fine ! I am working on the Japanes Feather Scarf and are going to order your new pattern right NOW !

  8. I take knitting with me everywhere so that I can knit in my spare minutes (being self employed helps),and I have found it makes a big difference in my productivity. A needleful of stitches at a time. When I tell this to people at my LYS and they look at me funny like I am joking, but maybe that is because I told them I like to knit while waiting at red lights.

  9. Awww…. the poor daffodils. Our tulips are only about 6 inches out of the ground and we’ve just had a big cold snap. Snow on the ground, roofs and more to come. I hope they’ll hold.

    I saw your picture on someone else’s blog! It was funny, because I was all “I know her! It’s Anne!” except really I don’t. One of those weird internet things again.

    I can sympathize with the knot in pattern publishing and a shawl is ever so much bigger than a silly mitt. Hang in there.

  10. our daffodils are just starting to sprout here – good thing as we got an inch or 2 of snow the other night! It is so cold here today. Spring better come soon!

  11. I don’t envy you the job of proofing a knitting pattern. I read over my blog entries three times, only to find some egregious mistake lurking once it is posted. And that is only words.

    I had emailed Nancy with a question about Knit Visualizer, and she got back to me immediately. I guess I should come up with a “wish list” of things I’d like it to do and pass it on.

    That work business is a double-edged sword. I fret when I’m running out of work, and I feel overwhelmed when I get assignments that were due “yesterday”. Even after 23 years as a freelancer, I’ve yet to have the ideal balance between work and life.

  12. Oh, the poor daffodils! Well, that’s why most springtime flowers are bulbs–evolution in action. We’ve had the same weather here, but most of my flowers didn’t get creamed because they’re up near the house. All the blooming flowers around town, though. Oy. It’s very sad. The blooming trees especially look depressed. But that’s spring, I guess.

  13. What sad little flowers! Glad you’ve been able to squeeze in some sock knitting during the random down-time in your current work projects.

  14. Don’t worry. We won’t bite even if there is a mistake. You take care of it (and us). I’m sorry about the flowers, but spring is on the way. It’s just been stalled out a bit. We (in St. Louis) were down to 27 this morning. It’s April, whaddaygonnado?

  15. I work in an office, and the only time I knit at work was when the power went out! I’m jealous that you can do it 🙂 but I do get a lot of blogs read while I’m waiting for things.

  16. We’re getting hit by the cold weather too! Our daffodils and tulips are all done due to an overly warm March, but our irises were about to start blooming. I’m hoping our lows in the low 20’s tonight don’t wipe them out 🙁

    The new shawl looks beautiful!

  17. Hehe, nothing like the silent treatment to make the Tree Scum sock come around!

    I do get in a few blogs at work, but I have yet to knit. However, class is a different story 😉

  18. Poor flowers! My mother in Wisconsin had the same problem. It’s really bad when it is a fruit tree in bloom.

    Looking forward to the shawl pattern!

  19. I really like the top sock, as Kristen mentions above, the parfait-looking sock. Is that sock yarn that you spun yourself? I like the various colors in it, it drawas my attention everytime you post a pic.

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