This is driving me crazy! I still can't get onto Yahoo!!!

ARGGHH!! I must have 500 messages built up by now. I can't access groups, I can't access my mail - nothing but the home page and that's IF I haven't signed in.

Our home computer is down so I've been accessing things on the work laptop - and its locked down otherwise I'd download Firefox immediately.

Curses! I apologize if anyone is trying to get ahold of me - use cfbandit at gmail dot com instead.

LoomClass Yahoo Group -

If anyone sees this, please let them know I have not been able to access Yahoo since about 12 noon yesterday. I've made all the updates to my browser and added all the shortcuts that Google suggested, but all I end up with is an endless spinning circle in my browser and nada for any Yahoo site.

Yesterday I was able to get on for short periods of time (a minute or two) before it would start that bit.

My computers from work only have Google Chrome on them since IE was deemed too much a security hazard and FF too resource intensive.

The video for "slip stitch in front" is in processing now and should be up tonight.

I've also updated my twitter status, facebook status to reflect this in the hopes someone sees it!

Great Marketing!

River Pouch - Final Information

The final versions of the two patterns have been uploaded as well as the conversions lesson PDF. Enjoy!

River Pouch - Final Needle Knit

River Pouch - Final Loom Knit

Conversion Lessons - River Pouch - Knits, Purls, Slips

Chart for the River Pouch

For the Slip Stitch Portion, here is the chart of the stitches. All white boxes are knits, all black boxes are slips.

The dark blue lines are the outer edges of the design - 15 stitches per row, 22 rows.

Edit: I'm going to add here a question that was asked in class since it would clarify things.

Yes, you do need to add a row of purls for the needle knit version or a row of knits for the loom knit version between each row. That will give you the correct amount of rows.

Vroom! Motorcycle Handle Covers

I hate when I forget to make a post!

I made these this past fall. They're super easy to do -

1. Measure the circumference and the length of the handle being covered.

2. Multiply that by the number of stitches per inch from your normal crochet gauge. In Jiffy Print, the yarn these are made of, that's 3.5 stitches/inch. With a 1.25 inch circumference, that's about 4.2 stitches around, rounded to five to make sure it slides on and off when needed.

3. Using an J hook, chain 5 and join to make a circle.

4. Do single crochet until you have reached the proper length of the cover. In this case, about 4 inches - 4.5 inches.

5. Bind off and go slip them on!

River Pouch: Class on Needle/Loom Conversion, Post 1

Hello all!

In this post are two pictures of the same project. One has been loom knit, the other has been needle knit.

Can you tell the difference? Leave a comment in the comments section with whether the dark blue or the light blue projects have been needle knitted or loom knitted.

First, take a look at: Conversion Tips. Then you can check out River Pouch - Needle Knit and River Pouch - Loom Knit on Ravelry for the patterns.

Funny!

Someone very creative on Facebook made this up:



(I do agree, though I shamefully went through a I heart Nickelback phase)

Cooking

Hi all!

I've been doing a bit of cooking lately. Here and there, a bit now and then. Nothing too fancy. I love making soup - adding lots of different things together to make such a great comfort food. My husband made the comment the other day that he should send my info to Gordon Ramsay's campaign to bring women back into the kitchen (no, not that way, stop your outrage in its tracks). I was a little teed off, then I started looking through my recipe files.

And realized part of the reason I didn't want to cook is that the recipes I have are exactly what I don't want to eat - too many carbs, too high fat, and too complicated.

So I've been searching the blogosphere looking at different people's blogs and recipes. One particular one popped out at me (while I was ...ahem...searching for a martini...picture) as looking really intriguing.

Dr Mary Dan Eades

I don't often spend time going back and reading past posts (save for the Bittersweet blog, but that's partly because I enjoy the recipes and partly because she's a damn good writer). This one I went back and read them. And found another writer that is refreshingly good with the English language, cooks a lot of interesting stuff, and BTW, happens to be the author of a best selling book. I like when people are like that - they may be celebrities, but they are refreshingly down to earth and seem like they understand the struggles of us little people out there (err...should I say not so little?).

I have been extremely busy lately, so no cooking as of my newfound discovery. The husband's been experimenting with low carb, though - Sunday's meal was a "pizza" frittata that I absolutely adored and sincerely hope he makes again.

Aside from the stress of putting a proposal together and suddenly finding your CFO forgot to do the cost estimate, I've been putting together a design for my class on the 25th. I need to get that photo over there...

I've also been going to the gym three nights a week since early December (yes, I beat all the stupid New Years resolution people in and I'm still going where they are not). I had been winning the stupid incentives - free water bottles, a tshirt, etc. Two weeks ago, however, I won a personal training session. I had two goals: 1. to lose weight and 2. to gain abdominal strength (of which I've had none since the cancer treatment).

What an eye opener when I went last week! She had me do things I swear I haven't done since high school. Push ups, weights, etc. and a few things with a new twist - lunges and crunches on a ball as well as my work on the extension machine to help my legs. And I'm embarrassed to say I got on the elliptical machine for the first time and am wondering why the heck treadmills exist now. Seriously? I can do 2.7 mph on the treadmill and be able to do 20 minutes. 8 minutes of elliptical and I've burned the same calorie count at 1 mph. And its a LOT more of a workout. I have to say I've been enjoying my workout sessions more with this new plan. I was a bit bored before and now the workouts are back to being interesting.

With the new(ish) diet and the extra exercise, I'm at least hoping to see either the weight or the inches go down (I've been having issues with water retention) soon. My membership at the gym is through February, I'm hoping to have enough money to renew it.

We shall see!

Architecture: 5 cents

Great post at Treehugger. I know, I cringe at the name too - but I think this is a very creative, inventive way to get out there and market his business.

My parents have hired architects on a few occasions. Even if its for a tiny project, it tends to be worth it to get the expert to lay down all the issues instead of going in and having to spend weeks, months, years figuring it all out yourself. The four season porch at my parents, for example - the architect helped Dad out with the roof issues.

I love it when humor, education and marketing all come together :-)

Urgent Notice to My UK Residing Friends

CareNews just posted a notice about this on Twitter.

Maggie's Law Petition

I read through it and am truly saddened that anyone could hurt a poor creature like that.

I can't sign the petition (I'm not in the UK), but I urge any one of my friends in the UK to sign it.

Hopefully the attacks will stop and life will be happy for the animals once these horrendous people are brought to justice.

Exciting New Things Ahead

Image via a Creative Commons License from Flickr User cursedthing

I know I've been promising a new pattern for awhile. Well, I'm signed on to teach a Loom Class at the LoomClass Yahoo Group so I'm gonna have to do one now :-)

The twist on this one is that it will be a needle knit pattern I design, and I'm teaching how to make a conversion of it on a knitting loom.

So far I've picked what I think might be an interesting stitch at a large gauge but have not tried it yet. That's for this weekend.

The Blackberry trio (hat, scarf, mittens) is taking me longer than I thought it would to do - my circs have been giving me a little trouble, poor vintage things that they are - and I've been sidetracked on genealogical stuff.

Anyone have ancestors named Joel Graves and Adelia Root? :-D

I've also got an idea in the works for a new project that I'm going to try and have done for the next Loom Knitters Circle.

For those of you who are relatively new to my circle of friends, Lycanthropile has taken the Supernatural Impala Dishcloth chart and made an awesome Metallicar Illusion Scarf out of it! I have to give her some props - the scarf looks awesome and I'm thinking about trying my hand at illusion work since I can actually see the image in her design!

I've been doing a lot of updates on my genealogy site since there have been so many new pieces of original data posted to the Family Search Labs, to HQ, etc. I've been itching to go back to my local FHC since I know they have a World Vital Records subscription but they closed for the holiday.

Did I mention my husband got a job just up the street from it? :-D Now I can have him pick up film order forms and drop off the cash to order them so I don't have to make a special trip out there just to order something (I swear, with all their changes I wish they'd implement online ordering of those darn things!).

Let's see...what else is going on? I got pissed off and left the kniftyknitterlooms yahoo group for the first time in almost five years because of a nasty note from the moderator. Its okay, though, the KK&LK group is a good replacement and the mod Helen is totally awesome (and prolific! You should see some of her designs! Ravelry user: myheartexposed).

I've also been editing a lot of photos taken over the summer and plan on starting to upload them soon for the Evergreen Cemetery in Lake Orion. I've also got a disc of ones from Ogle County, IL that I should upload...hmm...

I've got to get my Canadian GenWebs up to speed though. I've been trying to work on them quietly and replace a few links at a time, but my customers are demanding better and I'm going to try and get it to them. I need to develop a contact up there to start helping me develop some new stuff. I feel sad that I can add all this new exciting stuff to my USGW sites but not the Canadian ones.

Anyway, its back to procrastinating on filing for me!

Access 2007 - the Label Error

Okay, because this really annoyed me you're all going to have to suffer though a short post on MS Access 2007. Sorry!

Those who know me know I can't stand the program but that I have to use it at work in a multitude of functions.

Today's issue really frustrated me. I open a database, click "create labels" and then I get a label report that reads

"#error"

Huh? Searching the internet didn't give me any answers. I tried it three times before deciding that since it didn't work the first time, it was probably not going to work the 4th time.

So then I decided to go back to typing entries for my proposal log. And I see the "create" tab is available. So I click "labels".

This time, it gives me the SAME field options but it WORKS. It gives me a label listing I can export to an RTF and open in MS Word to edit the formatting (little blips here and there based off of how people entered titles.

So that's my big exciting thing of the day. The next thing I want to try and figure out is how to get it to do only entries done after a certain day.