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I spent a good part of my holiday weekend looking at other blogging options. There are many good things about blogger that I like, especially the ability to modify almost every part of my blog by digging into the html. However, I am completely enamored of some features that blogger doesn't have. I want the ability to reply to comments I receive a la Typepad. I would love to have static pages that are outside of the blog hierarchy like Wordpress. Then I found it. Blogger Beta. While I am much to lazy to move things over, I am quite excited about what it will have to offer. It looks like it will have the drag and drop customization that Wordpress has. It can integrate html into it unlike Wordpress. It does not have static pages. But, curiosity did indeed kill the cat and is quite like to to be the death of me (either that or the sudden avalanche of wool). So, long and short of it is that I want a cooler url and now I have one. http://www.houseofwool.blogspot.com/ Come on over and check it out. It will be undergoing some refurbishing as I get into the groove of CSS. Does anyone out there know of a good cheat sheet? I have a great one for HTML but the new blogger is CSS based. Let me know what you think. New posts will go up there. If I get ambitious, I will try to move some of the old ones over, but that probably won't happen any time soon. Update bloglines and see you on the other page!

Blogger is buggy today

I have been trying to post most of the day today. I get so frustrated when things that you expect to work don't. I finished another felted hat today. It came out pretty well. If I were to do it again, I would add the contrasting color to the outermost rim of the hat and make the stripe a bit wider. The crown of the hat is 40 rows before the decreases. I made the stripe 7 rows tall. I think I might make it 8 or 9 rows next time. The colors on the darker picture are more accurate. Naturally, the red doesn't photograph worth crap.

Eric has started a new rotation and while overall the hours sound like they will be better (pre-rounding at 7 versus 5:30 am), the call days are definitely worse. Today he is in the pediatric ER until 10 p.m. Blech. I have not worked much on the shawl in a futile, desperate, pathetic attempt to get a few more pieces done for the craft show. I am realizing that it is much closer than it should be. Mostly I will be doing hats. I love the felted ones and they are great stashbusters for me. This one was done from the same wool as Eric's hat and the red left over from a Christmas stocking. Hopefully this will off set the guilt of several recent online purchases. Destash is quickly becoming my worst nightmare, or at least my bank account's. On Saturday, I made my first purchase from Knitpicks. Yes, I realize that I am the last knitter alive to do so. I decided to try my hand at kool-aide dyeing again. The last one was so successful and I always need inexpensive wool for the felted hats. I also needed a needle and even with several balls of wool, the cost of the entire order with shipping was under 20 bucks. A decent needle would have cost at least $15 at my lys. Here's hoping it is a decent buy. Have a happy and safe Labor Day to all of those here in the U.S. We are really going all out by having Caleb's best friend over for the afternoon. (Yes, this is a bald faced attempt to keep him occupied while Eric is gone all day, thank you very much.)

A quick little knit

I have been working on the shawl nearly every day. It is progressing. I just finished row 100 which puts me about halfway through the fourth chart. I am ignoring how many more rows I have to go. Along with how many more stitches that is if I increase by 2 every row. (Really, it is 4 st on every odd row, but hey, who's counting.) I've noticed a few small errors, but nothing that I am willing to rip back for. Time to let my inner zen shine through. I am using lifelines because I am freaking paranoid about having to start over because I drop a stitch. For some reason, I did not wig out about doing my first true lace project with cobweb weight black yarn. Speaking of yarn, I am completely amazed that I have knit this much and only used 12 grams of yarn. I have another whole hank of this stuff. We'll have to see what becomes of it. I can't imagine wearing many shawls, but they are so lovely and really test my mind (not to mention my ability to refrain from profanities). I knit up the first hat from the clearance yarn. It is cute and simple. I plan to make a matching scarf for it using a broken rib pattern. It should be cute. I do love the sherbet-y color of this one.

On a completely different topic, I found the following blog entry on the top 10 ways to create angry employees. Tell me you haven't experienced at least a couple of them!