Author Archives: Autumn

More Knitting Wiktory!

As of 21h00 last night, I had a finished scarf.

It’s not as long as I’d hoped for, but it does cross over in front sufficently to keep it tucked in and to keep my neck warm. I do think I will get another skein (did I mention I was using Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in Licorice? It’s lovely stuff, once you get used to the silk slubs) and knit that up then graft them together, but it’s not pressing. Because yes, I finished the scarf to go with my new red woollen coat just in time for the temperature to plunge and my down-filled coat to come out of the closet. And this scarf is not the right accessory for a down-filled coat at all at all at all. Also, if it is cold enough to be wearing the down-filled coat, it is not warm enough to get away with this scarf.

Well, it will look beautiful with the coat when things warm up. And goodness knows the Montreal temperatures can’t stay steady for too long, so I imagine I’ll have opportunity to wear the new coat and scarf together again soon.

In other weather-related news, all the trees are encased in ice and the sun is shining though them. The big maple out front looked like its twigs were made of light this morning. Gorgeous. The library grounds were like a fairyland.

Orchestrated Update

New words today: 1,932
Total word count, Orchestrated: 54,058

If I’d known how close I was to 2K for the day I’d have written another seventy words.

And right before the two days to myself that I’d scheduled for writing, I’ve been handed another freelance assignment. At least this one is short and should hopefully be done in a day. I’d be more upset if I hadn’t worked on Orchestrated today while the boy watched Wall*E for the fourth time in two days.

Knitting Report

I cannot control the vagaries of my blog template messing with the appearance of the comment box (aptly dubbed ‘Schroedinger’s comment box’ by the lovely and gifted Asherah!) or the placement of said comment box if it does show up, but I can control my knitting!

So yes, I have what is shaping up to be a lovely loosely knit scarf, and roughly a third of my skein left. I suspect I will be making a run to Ariadne to pick up another skein because I want this scarf to go ’round my neck twice. Although I’ll knit to the end of this one and then decide. If it will do as-is (i.e. crosses over in the front even if only barely to cover my neck), then it will do. I can always knit another one after Christmas and graft them in the middle if I want to.

I also have two more projects lined up, both requests! Bodhifox needs a hat, and HRH needs a scarf, both of which require me to purl. But after mastering yarn overs while test-running the faggot lace pattern I suspect purling will now be so much easier, as I’ve got the bring-the-yarn-to-the-front thing down pat now.

The boy went down for his nap half an hour ago. I should pull out the laptop and try to get a page or so of Orchestrated done. I’m just so tired, though. Being even a little sick does that to me (thanks, fibro). And then there is Terry’s arrangement of Carol of the Bells for four cellos that Guanaco sent me this morning (thanks, guys!) that I’m itching to mess with.

Fun! Games!

Join Autumn and her Gentle Readers as they play the “Will the comment box show up for me this time?” game!

Yes, it’s the tricky sometimes-there-sometimes-not comment box. I have no idea what’s causing it. There’s no commonality among people having the issues: it’s not one browser type, or a Mac vs PC issue, or whether you had coffee or tea with your toast this morning.

A simple thing to try: When you’ve clicked on either “X responses” or “Leave comment” make sure you scroll down all the way to the bottom where the comment box lurks. A few people have missed that. If that doesn’t work, try reloading the page, or typing in the URL anew. Clearing the cache may work as well.

If you can comment, please do, even if it’s just a “Works for me” or “Tried before, didn’t work, now it does” sort of thing, so we all have some sort of idea how this is shaping up. And have fun. Because really, that’s all we can do at this point.

ETA: We know about the ‘comment box overlapping the comments in a long comment thread’ issue, too. Odd, isn’t it.

Huzzah!

My feeds are being picked up again by the RSS readers that recognised them before the new theme! Woo-hoo!

Sometimes all you need to do is wave sharp pointy and heavy blunt things at the computer and threaten certain doom sleep on it. :)

Of course, clicking on the ‘subscribe to feed’ link still takes you to a page of error messages, but hey. One thing at a time.

At this rate, I may have enough courage to try updating the entire installation again before the end of December. Assuming I can face the potential of Losing Everything Yet Again.

Also? Snow! Lots of it! With a bonus round of freezing rain in the middle! Winter is very definitely present, judging by the size of the ploughed snowbanks at the end of the driveway.

And… I have half a scarf. Go me!

ETA: I’ve just had a report that a reader can’t comment because the comment box doesn’t show up at all, in either Firefox or IE. Anyone else having a problem? If you don’t have one of my private addresses scribble a quick note to owldaughter AT gmail DOT com. (I can’t fix this one, or take the blame; this is a prepackaged theme that I have not messed with in any way, shape, or form. It’s also not the theme I wanted, though, so it’s not my Theme of Choice or set in stone.)

More new stuff: ‘Catastrophic’ low voter turnout for the provincial election this past Monday (no, really? what with election fatigue, a general hatred of government after the federal fiasco, and minus forty-after-windchill temperatures?), and apparently we had 17 centimetres of snow last night on top of the however many we got during the day.

Further Wiktory!

Gentle readers, I have a fully functional set of armwarmers.

Naturally I leapt directly into doing up the faggot lace scarf. Which isn’t going as quickly as it could, really, because I’m using size 15 needles in wood, which are blunt, and the wool/silk/cashmere yarn isn’t as soft and slippy as the merino was. (Ah, merino. I miss you already.) I could use my shiny metal turbo circular needles and just use them like regular needles, but they’re a different size. I’ll give this version of the scarf another four or five rows and see how it goes.

(Note: I have nothing to knit once the scarf is done. Augh! I could do test swatches in the acrylic I have stashed in the cupboard for arts and crafts, but it’s acrylic and it’s scritchy and doesn’t flow well. I have become a yarn snob in less than four weeks. It’s awful.)

Lots of snow out there. And it’s still coming down, in much fatter and fluffier flakes than it was this morning. Evidently everyone forgot how to drive this morning, because it took HRH an hour and a half to get into work instead of twenty minutes.

The boy is now at the coughing stage of the cold. Lovely. I suspect we will be running out of tissues very, very soon. We’ll bake cookies after his nap, and have them with real hot chocolate topped with frothed milk.

Winter: Present!

Yesterday after doing a bunch of HTML for the pro site (yay me), I spent much argh-filled time whacking at php and css code about which I know, well, exactly nothing (argh, why does WordPress hate me so?). Then I played the cello very loudly for about an hour, polishing up the recital stuff for this coming Sunday. I toyed with the idea of suiting up in my down-filled winter coat and going out to vote (because here in Canada our punishment for being less than stoic about sub-Arctic temperatures is being forced to vote in YET ANOTHER ELECTION — did I mention that my municipal riding has a by-election I must vote in next Sunday as well?) but decided to wait for HRH and the boy to come home so we could all do it together. I played more cello instead. I’m really happy with how my technique has firmed up over the past two months with my teacher: my sound is so much better.

Going out with the boys was kind of fun, because we looked at all the Christmas lights that are up in the neighbourhood as we walked to the polling station. And also because the boy carried my voter card and handed it importantly to everyone who needed to look at it, telling them with confidence, “I’m here to vote.” He went in with HRH, and as HRH and I swapped places I could hear the ripple of “He’s so cute!” comments coming from the tables of scrutineers. Apparently he helped HRH hold the pencil to mark the ballot, and put the actual ballot in the box. (Which isn’t entirely legal, but evidently the cute factor won out over hard-hearted scrutineers who might have insisted on By The Book electoral activity. Everyone seemed to approve of the Start Them Young attitude we have about it.) (Oh, the election results? Our province elected a Liberal government for a third term, this time as a majority. The PQ has surged back into the position of official opposition, the leader spouting all sorts of rabid separatist rhetoric in the post-results speech that wasn’t really heard during the campaign. Thanks for stirring up local anti-Canada sentiment again with your idiocy at the federal level, Stephen Harper. You idiot, you’ve thrown our province back into the late seventies.)

Today, however, the boy is home with a cold. He impressed his teachers to no end yesterday by asking to have his nose blown when necessary, and then actually blowing his nose when a tissue was applied to it. “We have five year olds who can’t do that,” his teacher said in astonishment. I’m hoping he’s over the really bad part so he can go to school tomorrow, otherwise I suspect he’ll be home until Friday. (And as if on cue, there is a call of, “Mama, can you blow my nose please?” from the living room.) With the number of colds making the rounds of schools and just about everywhere else, I shouldn’t be surprised. Most people I know are sick, too. This is the part of winter that isn’t so much fun.

Last night I also cast on my second armwarmer and am two-thirds of the way done. Amazing how quickly it goes when you’re curled up in front of the election coverage. I might even be able to start my scarf today, if I feel up to trying the lace pattern that I twisted so badly on my test yarn.

Right. Off to return to the boy, who is watching Richard Scarry cartoons on TV while I check out what’s going on in the world. I intend to finish that armwarmer before lunch. I need them: my office is on an outside corner and is poorly insulated, so I get all sorts of cold radiating in from the corner in which my computer is set up. Yesterday I wore woollen tights under my jeans and a shirt under my heavy woollen sweater. Also, they’ll help my hands warm up faster when I play the cello.