Flash, Feeling Fried, and a Sara hat

Ack, it’s been a while as Kara and Kristin reminded me. I’ve been quite busy with work and school lately. At work I wrote a grant last year for my library which we were awarded to redesign our website. My boss and I decided on a company to do the redesign and met with them two weeks ago to start the process and I can tell it’s going to be a lot of fun! I need to start rewriting some content and new stuff to fill in the design work that our contractor is doing.

Thank goodness this is my last semester of school as the burnout has reached an all time high. Thank goodness also that I only have one class and it is FUN! Library school in the 21st century is pretty awesome. I’ve learned everything I know about web design from graduate coursework and right now I’m taking a course on Flash. It’s a pretty fun way to finish out the Masters. (I’m trying not to think about the Comprehensive Exams I have coming up in April.) Flash is fun but it’s challenging too. I have tremendous respect now for some of the fancy stuff that is out there.

So, when work and school are taken care of, there is LibriVox to tend to and I found myself feeling swamped in poetry collections and barely able to keep up, let alone record something. So I reached out to some of my fellow metacoordinators for help and the wonderful Kristin (Wisconsin Kristin, not New Hampshire Kristin) stepped up to the plate and we will now alternate short poetry collections. It’ll be like a tag team and give me some breathing room which is much needed. As soon as I’m done posting this I plan on recording a chapter or two of Anne which has gone sadly neglected for weeks now as many of you have reminded me! ;)

I’ve been feeling fried lately. My Meniere’s Disease is flaring up and I tend to try to pretend it isn’t and push through it which of course only makes it worse. It’s so frustrating to be slowed down and held back when I have so many things I want to do. Granted, one of the main things is sitting on the couch with my man and watching tv or Six Feet Under on DVD and knitting but we all need our down time. :D

Knitting is my new obsession. I have been having fun with all my beautiful new yarn but I got sidetracked when a coworker and friend added a baby girl to their family two weeks ago. I went to my awesome local yarn store and picked out some pretty pink cotton and knit this up in a few nights:

Sara Hat - close up

It’s a pretty pink Sara Hat! The decorations were sort of accidental. I knit two rows of ribbing at the recommendation of a book I was using as a guide to control the roll. Only the roll controlled itself quite nicely and the ribbing just looked silly so I threaded some ribbon through it. The little roses I just found in my random craft stash and used them to mask some decreases that were more obvious than I would have liked. I’m quite happy with how it turned out and I can’t wait to see it on the sweet baby’s head, although I’m told it is too big. And to think I was worried it was too small! But babies in my family tend to have ginormous heads so maybe I let that factor in too much.

But now I’m happily on to my other projects again. I’ve learned some fun new stuff and will post pictures soon. And there’s your Annie update.

3 Responses to “Flash, Feeling Fried, and a Sara hat”

  1. Oh, that hat is darling. You’ve got a knack! Your flash assignments are impressive — I’ve monkeyed around with flash a bit and it’s kind of daunting.

  2. Don’t run yourself down Annie! You should definitely take the time you need to relax :)

    Ahh, I’ve played around with flash a bit. I think it’s one of those things that I’d have to take a class to really learn well, as I don’t have a big drive to learn on my own.

    What a sweet little hat :) The good thing is that the baby will grow into it, so it’ll fit eventually!

  3. Flash isn’t too difficult if you take it one tiny step at a time. The class I’m taking now is a distance ed course so it is in many ways mostly self instruction on a schedule and with assignments. The textbook we’re using is great, it walks you through things nice and slow and has a CD-ROM with lots of practice exercises. Check it out here if either of you decide you want to learn some more: Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-On Training by John Gonzalez

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