(such a) Fickle Stitcher

Wow! It’s 4:30pm on Sunday afternoon and ALL of my classwork which is due by midnight tonight is completed and submitted!

I can actually enjoy a quiet Sunday evening… go to supper, knit, and watch some television we recorded during the week — or some of the Law & Order: Criminal Intent 6th season marathon on USA.

Speaking of knitting, I have one knit row and the bind-off row yet to do to finish the red Swallowtail! More reason for a happy dance! I may pull out a WIP I was reminded of when IM’ing with my sister last night. Pictures will follow.

Note to self:
An hour of knitting lace with dark thread, wearing black slacks, over lunch break makes it very difficult to read the MARC fields in WorkFlows.

I’m not even going to try to backtrack for you how I got to this meme… through some of my aggregate readings. I think I had to link back to through about 7 blog posts before I found the instructions. I thought it was a little different:

My Desktop Free View Instruction:

A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by: [1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key). [2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V). [3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

For MAC users: Press [ Apple] [ Ctrl ] [ Shift ] and [ 3 ]

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

Let’s see those desktops!!

So, here’s my work desktop:

I’d already posted the photo I was using on my other blog, so I hunted a new photo… I have all our Tibet photos on a screensaver, so that sometimes when I come back to my desk I see a photo I don’t ever remember seeing before. This is one of them. There are “Mani stones” everywhere in Tibet; some are carved into stone (like this one), others are painted either all in one color, or in the five sacred colors (white, red, blue, green, yellow). I’m sorry, but at this time, I don’t know the translation of the lower section of Tibetan.

As for icons, I keep my work desktop VERY clean of them. Only the shortcuts for the programs I use; I mostly use the Quick Launch portion of the Taskbar… it’s handier than the desktop, actually, for accessing shortcuts.

I’m not goign to tage anyone, but it would be fun to see more desktops, so leave me a comment if you decide to play, please?  I’ll edit to add my laptop desktop later (or maybe post it on my old blog).

I lied. There are 40 rows from the end of the Budding Lace Pattern 2 to the bind off row of the Swallowtail shawl. I finished the 12 rows of the Lily of the Valley Border 1 pattern today/night — mostly on the ride to get groceries today and home. (Oh, how I despise going grocery shopping!) My knitting companion kept me company for a while. Once I started typing assignments and fretting with books, however, he found a more still place to sleep.

Oops. He’s back. Time for one or two more rows on the shawl, then off to bed.

Finally, I am finished with the Budding Lace 2 pattern on my red Swallowtail shawl!

Once reaching this point, there are only 28 rows until the bind-off row. Of course, the rows will grow from 195 to 323 stitches in those 28 rows. On the drive to and home from supper out this evening, I put on the first four (of ten) rows of Lily of the Valley Border 1 pattern.

I am convinced that I was so successful in completing the Budding Lace last night because of my companion.

Look closely, and you can see my right arm trapped embraced by my golden fellow . . . “Enough knitting for tonight, please?”

Do I dare say that this is a Christmas gift for my sister? I don’t think she reads my blog, so perhaps I am safe. I’ve used a larger needle than called for in the pattern (6US/4.5mm vs. 4US/3.5mm), in order to make the shawl larger. I had a lot of yarn remaining when I finished my gray Swallowtail. Now I will just have to keep stitching to know whether I will actually run out of yarn. At that point, I guess I will either be begging on knitswap or through the two knit-alongs for some leftovers, or try to calculate an adjustment to the pattern.

For now, though I’m glad that the Budding Lace is O-V-E-R !

Is it really an update when all you’ve done is rip?

Son#2 is driving us to campus this week. On the ride Tuesday morning, I manage to complete four rows on the red Swallowtail shawl. On the way home, I ripped back two of them.  Then that night, I ripped back the other two!

I drove his car yesterday morning because he felt poorly, but he drove homes, so I pulled out the little red devil to knit… unbelieveably, I saw that my count at the edges was off. I ripped three more rows on the ride home and the fourth last evening while waiting for my class chat to begin while I waited for my lunch today, so I still haven’t been able to reknit it yet!

HOW can I have so much trouble with such a simple pattern?

I have 148 of the 196 stitches needed before I move on to the next pattern; that’s four more repeats. I’d show you a picture of all the tinkered yarn, but it would just be too sad.

I have added my Chicago photos to an album (link is also on sidebar), but I must apologize, there are no seminar photos! There are lots of buildings, some shots from the Tibet exhibit at the Field Museum, some from Chinatown, and of the Chicago libraries. Some are blurry, some are unlabeled . . . I forgot my maps yesterday (and today) to correctly identify the buildings.

(There are no links — or there shouldn’t be – to full-size files . . . if you are burning to see something bigger, just let me know.  I’m new at this domain stuff and don’t know how the bandwidth usage will be effected with big files.)

Here’s my favorite:

  How many blogs does one have to have to be addicted?

  I don’t know how long I’ll even keep up the old one, Dancing My Life Away, now that I’ve started this on my own domain… but before I had decided to do this, while I was at seminar, I created a new one, Crewel Intentions.

  Rissa, Lisa and I are sort of on a crewel kick — actually, I’m just finally joining in. LOL!  Perhaps we can co-author the crewel blog and document our “Year of Barbara Jackson” projects.

  Temperature, that is.  It’s amazing what a little bit of cooler weather can do for one’s outlook and attitude…

  Today was the (rescheduled due to National Seminar) meeting day for my face-to-face EGA chapter.  We issued a special invitation to the public to join us to stitch ”Kissing Pillows.”  This is an outreach effort headed by the Yellow Rose chapter in Texas to distribute a small stitched pillow which soldiers can leave with their children as a tangible reminder of the deployed parent’s love.  We had expected a larger turnout after the great response (via email) to an article in a Jackson paper, but we were happy to meet the few who did come to help us stitch the pillows.  And even happier that they wanted to take extra kits to stitch!  Our guests included one young girl who arrived with her mother just as we were packing up.  We got her started stitching and invited her to come back, especially if she needed help.  This is an outreach project which we intend to continue to support, so perhaps more interested folks will come next time.  (For additional information about this effort, please contact yellowroseega.outreach@gmail.com.)

    While I was doing this:

(and showing off my seminar pieces, and talking, and talking) my sweet husband was shopping and bought me this:

It’s a set of small files which fit inside the aluminium handle.  When I was beading a lot, I could have made more use of it, but now that I have it I bet I will discover all sorts of unexpected uses for it.

  We had  a delightful supper at Ichiban’s, AND, I managed to get the assigned chapter read in my management textbook on the ride to and from the meeting – without falling asleep!  As much as I want to stitch tomorrow, the LS work has to come first.

  Oh, and the “Boiled Peanut Man” was selling his wares, so, of course we had to stop. Yum.

the post, that is… getting the new site set up is definitely not quick, as least for me. However, I’m getting there. Or, rather, here: http://blog.ficklestitch.com/ Hope you’ll like my new home… now it is way past this stitcher’s bedtime. TGIF tomorrow! Pictures and stitching coming soon, I promise.