Anyway: PDFCreator. It’s free, and it works great. You can use it from any windows program—it gets installed as a printer driver, so you just go to print and pick the PDFCreator as your printer, and it’ll save whatever file you’ve got as a PDF file. It’s been working out really well for me. This is the first free one I’ve ever run across; everything else I’d seen that would do this was shareware and I am all about the free software, so I jumped on this when I saw the link in one of my newsletters…

But that’d be too simple, and the feeds have been broken all weekend. I think it’s fixed now.

I finished the Seraphina shawl last night (Heh. Just in time for the weather to turn warm) but the photos I took didn’t come out, so I’ll try that again tonight. Or tomorrow—we need to pick Sara up at the airport in Columbus tonight and then drive her to Athens and I may not be up for much by the time we get back home. Soon, though.

The memo bag is mostly done, but I’m dithering about the flap. The chevron rows on the flap are coming out just slightly narrower than the rest of the bag. It’s slight enough that if I tug on it it’ll straighten out and be as wide as the rest, but I’m afraid it’ll shrink a lot when I felt the thing and look weird when it’s done. So I can’t decide if I want to rip out all those rows and re-do them with a bigger hook or what.

I bought yarn for that little corset over the weekend. I didn’t mean to, meant to wait a while, but we were at Hobby Lobby and Don is such an enabler and all that. (Yeah. We’ll blame it on Don. I had nothing to do with it.) Paton’s Katrina in black. I decided against holding out till I found that Berocco suede because I knew I wasn’t going to find it anyplace closer than Pittsburgh and I didn’t want to have to pay shipping on it. That Katrina also looks less horrendously warm, which is nice.

The pattern demands that you use yarn that would knit up at 19 sts/4 inches, and this is 18 sts/4 inches, but I am not worried about that. (Famous last words?) I always have trouble making gauge because my stitches come out too small and have to change hook sizes and so on, so if anything, having yarn that’s just a smidge bulkier should help.

The shawl is pretty close to done. I’ve got the main triangle done, just need to do the edging and fringe. Though I’m going to see what it looks like pre-fringe before I decide on that because fringing makes me crazy. If I do fringe it, I’ll probably do the twisty fringe like on Marlo’s Aran scarf that I made last winter, much easier to deal with…

Also, the gallery is working again, but the pictures in the posts probably aren’t because I haven’t gotten the redirects working (the new version uses a different URL format).

So on to the quiz results!

The gallery being broken also has probably resulted in many/most of my project pics being broken, too, since I was uploading them to Gallery and then pulling them over here.

Right now I’ve got the new Gallery installed and I’m importing photos, so by the time you see this it might even be working! But if you try to visit it and see only a test album with a photo of a butter cow, it means I’m still working on things…

And how come I never find myself saying, “Hey, that winter just flew by! Can you believe it’s spring already?” Wouldn’t that be nice?

Hey, I remember reading someone’s blog months ago who was having a really hard time with Bloglines and was looking for something different. It was long enough ago that I can’t remember where I read it. And I found this recently and thought I’d share. It turns out that NewsGator has pretty much the same service. And you can export your subscription list at Bloglines, then import it at NewsGator, so you don’t have to add all your subscriptions all over again. (To do that you click “Edit” on your blog list, scroll waaaay down to the bottom, and pick “Export subscriptions”. A window will open that’s all full of gibberish code. Go to “File”, “Save as”, and make sure the file extension is .xml which is the format NewsGator can import.)

When I registered at NewsGator, it was a little strange at first because it makes it sound like it’s a pay service only—but it isn’t. There’s a free version that does everything Bloglines does as far as I’ve seen, and while you’re registering there’s a page that lets you pick which version you want, free or pay.

I set up an account with them and I’m using both them and Bloglines right now to decide which I like better. So far I’m liking NewsGator a lot and it seems to pick up new posts in my feeds quicker than Bloglines does. But some things about them are weird, like when you go to add a feed and it tells you you can search or browse, then after staring at the page a while you see this link above all that that says “URL & Import”, which is where you add feeds the way you would at Bloglines. Also I think you have to click something to mark a feed read, but that might just be something I set wrong in my preferences. (I just checked on that, and there was a box I could check on the settings page to mark them read automatically after I look at them like what happens at Bloglines.)

So we’ll see who I like better in the end, I guess. I suppose it’s mostly a matter of getting used to the changes in interface from Bloglines. I don’t have a really compelling reason to switch apart from Bloglines seeming to take a long time to register that a blog has new posts, but I figure it’s worth checking out and keeping my subscriptions listed there in case Bloglines has problems.

I’m doing a test here, going to check after I post this to try to see how long it take each of them to pick up the new post.

[Update: After posting this, I hit reload on my Bloglines and Newsgator pages about every fifteen minutes or so. Results:
Posted at: 3:30 (I know it says 3:10 or so but that's when I started writing it, not when I posted.
Bloglines: picked up the post sometime between 5:15 and 5:30 (so upwards of two hours)
Newsgator: picked up the post sometime between 4:00 and 4:15 (somewhere between a half hour and 45 minutes)
Very interesting...]

I haven’t crocheted in a few days. Aside from the Numb Finger (and I am taking B-vitamins more regularly now, including an extra B-6, thanks to Deneen’s tip that it doesn’t seem to be the one of the B vitamins that invites Captain Heartburn to the party), remember how I mentioned a few days or so ago that I had this twingy thing that I’ve come to associate with early signs of carpal tunnel? I had almost no sooner posted that than both my wrists went south on me. One of them I have a brace for from back when I had problems with it, and I’m wearing while I use the computer (which is difficult, but not impossible since it’s a straight brace, not the bent kind, which my doctor said was inflaming the tendons in my wrist), but the other one, my left wrist, and I’m left-handed, is feeling pretty bad.

So I guess I need to not stress my wrists out while I let the B vitamins do their magic trick. And that means all my thready projects definitely need to be put off for a while. After another day or two of no crochet, hopefully I’ll be feeling enough better to be able to tell whether crocheting with bigger hooks is aggravating the problem.

In any case, I’m hoping it gets better soon…

This will probably take me a few more days or a week since I’m just doing a month’s worth of posts here and there, so my feed might be a little wonky with old posts occasionally getting marked as new again for a little while.

1. Purse. I intend to bust out the sewing machine tonight. I’d like to get the purse handles finished and attached, dig around for that black fabric that I know I have somewhere, and get the lining made. I may not necessarily get around to attaching it tonight, though, since I also need to do laundry and things like that.
2. Comfort pack. I have the cover and buttons made and one button sewed on (two to go—only three total since it’s narrower than the last one I made). The fabric for the inner pack is cut, just need to sew it up and fill it while I’ve got the machine out for the purse lining.
3. Dreaming doily. I haven’t touched this all week since I started the pineapple doily. I’ll come back to it.
4. Ankle socks. Also untouched this week.
5. Pineapple doily. This is one of the patterns in the Workbasket I picked up, and it’s my first doily in #30 thread. Coming along very slowly but steadily since I’m only working on it a little at a time.

Boring stuff ahead: I’ve done a little bit of work on the blog here and there. I’ve been doing better at keeping my WIP progress bars updated after noticing earlier this week that the list had almost no bearing on what I’m acutally working on. And I moved the calendar and archives closer to the top of the page and installed a plugin to make the archives look more organized. Recently I’ve also been reworking the categories a bit, mostly just to make things better organized for me since the categories don’t really affect what you’re seeing on the page unless you click on a cagetory to see all the posts listed in it.

Okay, I’m done here for today, need to get things wrapped up at work…

I’m not entirely sure whether, when it decides a comment needs to be moderated, it actually tells you that your comment is being held until I look at it, or if it just looks like your comment vanished into the ether, so I thought I’d mention I’ve been having an issue with that.

I wonder if that happened the day I somehow cross-linked the descriptions for two different pictures and I just never noticed until now. But I was also editing some album properties recently by changing them on the main album and telling it to apply it to all the albums underneath, but it promised me that applying the changes to nested albums wouldn’t affect the album titles. And it didn’t affect anything else. Freaky.

Maybe I should update to the newest version, ya think?

I finally finished the thread version of Jess’s Winged Hair Kerchief that I’ve been working on for a while. Photos:

And from the front, not that you can see much of it due to the angle:

It’s me, standing in front of a block wall! Kinda like a mug shot, only with a cute hair accessory! (I’m at work, hence the block wall background.)

I just kept on going with the pattern until it was big enough. The only thing I changed was the last bit of edging around the front, which I changed to hdc because I decided it would look better since everything was so tiny to begin with. I chained about 99 for the ties. Started to slip stitch back up the chain to make it more substantial but decided not to. I probably should have, since the ties are pretty thin and a little hard to get hold of. I might attach more thread on and slip stitch down the chains after all to make them thicker.

Tip for making bullion stitches: I got lots of practice with these since there were so many more than in the first one I did in ww yarn. My major trouble with them was getting the hook through, and I found a trick to it. (Aside from wrapping the yarn loosely enough, which is of course crucial to the process.) If the hook gets stuck partway through, try twirling it a bit. I started doing that and they went so much easier after that. A bit of twirling and the hook would free up and slide right through.

The other main thing I’ve been working on lately is Marvie’s Purse with No Name. I’ve been through the desert with a purse with no name… Er. Sorry. That made that song run through my head. (Or does the purse have a name now and I haven’t caught on?) I’m very nearly done, but I got stuck on the handles and needed to put it down for a bit, so I spent a few days playing with tatting and finishing up the kerchief.

Right now I can’t feel the tip of my left ring finger. By “tip” I mean most of the entire end of the finger from the last joint on. While I was finishing the kerchief last night, toward the end I noticed that fingertip getting a little bit tingly, but I ignored it because I really wanted to finish. Then when I was done I realized it all numb. I’m left-handed and hold the hook knife-style, and picking up a hook to check, the numbest part is right where the hook rests against that finger. It’s got to be from the pressure or something; doing that last bit of edging took some work since I was working into tight bits.

At the time I figured it’d be better by morning. It wasn’t—it’s just as numb today. I am slightly freaked out by this. I figure I’ve just pinched a nerve or something and it’ll get better over a few days, but it’s still a bit disturbing. And strangely enough it’s practically all I can notice. You’d think that with it being numb I wouldn’t notice it, but I keep noticing it because it feels wrong.

This should be fixed now. The feed should show up to 25 unread posts, full text rather than summaries (unless you set it to show just summaries in your Bloglines subscription), and the images should show up. If anyone sees any problems, please let me know, okay? Either in the comments, or my email address is over on the sidebar. Thanks! :)

I’ve got one snowflake done so far for the Snowflake Crochet-Along:

(clickable for full-size version and pattern info, but the full size one is super blurry)

The Kittycat Progress Report: Cat seems to be almost entirely better. He has more energy, he’s running around and playing, and he’s fighting back about taking his pill twice a day (at first he just lay there and took it, all dispirited-like), all of which is really nice to see. Though not so easy to give him the pill now. And this morning he finally realized that he could pretend to swallow the pill, then go spit it out in the corner, so we’re having to watch him like a hawk to make sure he actually swallowed it.

He’s not constantly straining to pee now, and he’s not peeing in inappropriate places. (Hooray!) He’s still peeing more often than usual, but we were told to expect that for a while, and that as long as he’s peeing and not straining he should be fine. He has another week of antibiotics to go, too.

We’re giving him (and Lena, since there’d surely be hell to pay if we tried to give it to just Kittycat) a half a can of wet food in the morning and a half a can at night, too. They are all in favor of this. We’re planning to cut back to a quarter can each in the morning and at night, so they’d each be getting a half can a day, because they have shown no sign of slowing down with the crunchies and we don’t really want them to turn into Kittyzillas. We’ll see how it goes. Loco thinks it’s patently unfair that we’re giving the cats something so yummy-smelling and not giving any to him. I tried explaining to him that the cats didn’t get to eat the equivalent of half a hamburger last night in combined bits from the three of us, but he does not buy this excuse and feels that I should run out to Walmart and pick him up some Alpo.

Something about crochet, for once: I have about one and a third squares left to make, then it’s on to edging/joinging the afghan. And weaving in the ends—in the beginning I was determined to do that as I went along but as usual, I started putting it off. It shouldn’t be too bad, four ends for each square (including the ends made when I edge and join them) times 36 squares…144 ends, minus probably 20 or 30 that I’ve already done. Not half as bad as that throw rug where I saved them all to the end and found out there were something like 400 of them. (Yes, I really do figure up how many ends there are to do. I know that’s dorky but it makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere once I get started.) Almost there!

I will be back shortly with a photo of a surprise I got in the mail :) but right now I’m still working on my coffee, and my minimal photography skills just aren’t at their best this early in the day…

Oh, and look! I got to the bottom of the category list on the right not nesting properly. Turns out I needed to download a new file to fix a bug that was in the release I installed. Oops! Guess I should’ve checked the support forums before I spent all that time searching the documentation for info on how to sort the list!

RSS feed: http://daisywreath.net/crochet/feed/
Atom feed: http://daisywreath.net/crochet/feed/atom/
Bloglines subscribe URL: Subscribe with Bloglines

I hope Bloglines updates things automatically, because I checked and both my old feeds show up with the exclamation point, and no posts show up after I did the upgrade. I put some server-side redirects in, so with any luck the old Bloglines feeds will stop being broken because they automatically forward to the new addresses now. In theory, anyway—I’ll have to check later at Bloglines and see if that’s what actually happens…

Now if only I can get the list of categories fixed so it’s not such a jumbled-up mess!

As far as I’m aware, the only things that are still broken are one of my feeds and the messed-up category nesting over in the sidebar.

If you use Bloglines or some service like that and it says my feed is broken, try using this one instead: http://daisywreath.net/crochet/feed/. I’ll try to get the other feed working again, too. I’ve read what’s involved in getting it un-broken but haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet…

And, erm, the comments are here but also not here at the same time. I can still see them all in the administration area, but they’re missing when you click on a comments link. Double hmmph. This one is probably my fault. I renamed the comments files a while ago to help foil spammers, and I don’t think I’ve made sure yet that it’s looking for the comments in the right place.

Other than that I think things are under control. If anyone notices anything that seems broken other than the categories and comments, I’d be super grateful if you’d let me know— yarnification@daisywreath.net since the comments are down right now…