anniecoleman.com

Some evil spammy thing wormed its way into my website and seriously messed up my blog.  All of my pages are GONE.  Podcast page, Pride and Prejudice page, Huck Finn page, Poetry Page, About Me page, all gone.  I was unable to post or edit anything until I finally got in the WordPress support forums and found this thread which contained the problem and solution.  Many thanks to those people more tech-headed than I am who figured this out.  Problem fixed, WordPress upgraded, plenty of stuff wiped out but for the most part the blog itself is fine so that’s a relief.  My theme and all the modifications I had made to it got wiped out in the upgrade but I don’t mind, it’s kind of like the chance to try out a new look.  So I’ll probably be fussing with it for a bit until I settle on the theme I like best.  In the meantime, bear with me as I rebuild the lost pages of audio files and put everything back together again!

P.S. Wedding pics and Anne of Green Gables coming soon.

ETA: Yea, my pages weren’t wiped out, they were just mysteriously transformed into posts!  They’re back as they should be now.

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I’m probably driving all 12 of you who view my website regularly crazy by changing its appearance so often but I’ve been having trouble settling on something that looks nice, serves all my needs, and is simple and clean.  I think this will be a good one for me after I’ve had a chance to tweak a few more things.

I can’t wait to get my Ravelry invite so I can keep track of my projects there instead of creating new blog pages for every project.  In fact, I don’t think I will make any more new pages since I expect my invite should come soon.   In the meantime, I joined the Kauni Knit Along and am looking forward to that.  I’ve never done a knit along before and it will be nice to have support for this project.

Not a lot of knitting progress today because I finally did thank you notes for the graduation party we had a month ago.  I’m not at home (Stephen’s out of town, I’m sick and at my parents) so I can’t post pictures till tomorrow of the Chunky Blanket.

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This post is a shout out to my local yarn store, Kirkwood Knittery, and the great women who work there. I’ve mentioned the store briefly before but not specifically by name. They have an email mailing list where they send out information about classes, yarns, sales, etc. and every time I get one I think, they really should have a blog and a website, it would be much more convenient. And then I started thinking, hey, I could build them a basic website.

So I mentioned that to the owners (Brooke Nico and Susie Kinsella) when I was there today and told them to keep me in mind when they decide it is time for their business to develop a website. So then they were asking about my blog and website and if I ever mentioned the store. I said not by name but yes. Susie said that out of town folks are sometimes confused by just where they are. What most people don’t realize is that, until recently, very few people who “live in St. Louis” actually lived in the city of St. Louis. The city was run down and there wasn’t much housing but there is a revitalization going on now that is encouraging.

In any case, there are a whole lot of folks who live in the suburbs of St. Louis. But if I told you I lived in Richmond Heights, you’d probably say, “where?” But St. Louis you’ve heard of and have a rough idea where it is on a map, right? Well, it’s the same with Kirkwood. It is a suburb of St. Louis and it has an awesome little yarn store called Kirkwood Knittery that started up recently. I discovered it soon after I decided to learn to knit again and loved it immediately. I visited another yarn store in the St. Louis area not long after that but Kirkwood Knittery felt much more personal and inviting and welcoming so that’s where I go. For those of you in the area, it’s at 10724 Manchester Road. Every time I’ve gone there either Brooke or Susie has been there (if not both) and they are very friendly and know their stuff. I’ve also met a few of their other employees, Naomi and Adrienne and they’re just as great.

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I’m still sick, had a second gentamicin injection on Monday (the 7th). Waiting for the nasty stuff to really kick in although this week hasn’t been much fun. I’m done with school which is kind of unbelievable and hasn’t quite sunk in yet. If I had attended my graduation, it would have been on Friday the 11th. So I’m officially a graduate, officially done with my Masters, officially a librarian. It is so nice to have that weight off my shoulders.

So what does a sick gal stuck at home do? Knit of course. And listen to lots of Harry Potter. I just finished listening to the 6th one and don’t know what I’m going to listen to next. I finished Julia’s Bag and it turned out great:

zipper and strap:

and a pocket on the inside:

And Julia liked it so that’s what matters. I’m realizing I should get myself a basic sewing machine. Just for sewing on zippers and such.

A few weeks ago I wanted to try out Log Cabin knitting as made popular in Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner and Ann Meador Shayne because I’m thinking about doing a baby blanket in that style this summer. So I grabbed some leftover yarn from another project and it turned out well enough. It’s just two colors so the Log Cabin isn’t as clear as it could be but I got a feel for how to work it evenly. And I ended up with a big rectangle. I let it sit on the table for a few days while I tried to decide what to do with this lovely, soft rectangle. And I decided to make it into a hand towel for our bathroom. So I got out my copy of The Knitter’s Bible by Claire Crompton and used the tiny bits of yarn I had left to make two little I-cords and sewed them on as handles. It’s not very tidy or well done but it served its purpose and its a decent hand towel!

I finished my Yellowstone Socks: and they are lovely and warm and fit perfectly. I had to knit the second one on needles one size smaller to get them to come out the same. Apparently I’m not great at making two things of the same size. But I’m in love with sock knitting. The yarn is Mountain Colors Hand Painted Yarns - Bearfoot inthe colorway “Yellowstone.”

Thanks to all who advised on the Camo Sweater sleeves, I decided to leave it as it was and the second one did in fact match. The sweater is nearly done, I just need to sew up the underarm seams, knit the collar, weave in ends and block it then I’ll post some pics.

I’ve been working on Mother’s Day gifts and a graduation gift for my sister so those are top priority right now as they would ideally both have been done by now. But I felt the need to update. I fiddled around with my blog layout a bit and I think I like it better, it’s a bit more streamlined.

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So, the past week I’ve been driving myself nuts working on a “Mini Project” for my Flash class. We were given a JPG file of the school mascot and instructed to include a variety of animation elements we have learned so far in the class. I submitted my project at 11:30 pm last night, 15 minutes before the deadline. Check it out and admire at your leisure.

In other news my Meniere’s had continued to be problematic and then last week my ear started to feel funny. As in I could tell something was wrong with the opening in my ear drum. The reason why I have an opening in my ear drum is related to a device called the Meniett which I’ll let you investigate on your own if you choose. In any case, I’ve had tubes, I’ve had problems with tubes, they’ve been in and out and the last time my doctor (who is wonderful by the way) ended up having to take the tube out, he was sure that the opening would stay open. But last week on Wednesday night my ear felt funny and Thursday I woke up and was pretty much sure it was closed. Yesterday I saw the doctor and sure enough, it sealed itself back up again. Rather than have outpatient surgery to put in a fancy T-shaped tube as we’ve done the last two times, we opted for a “temporary” tube done right then and there in the office as we did with the first tube. My doctor’s theory was that since the T-tubes haven’t lasted any longer than the temporary ones, might as well git ‘er done so to speak. Well, it wasn’t fun but at least it is done and I can use my Meniett again starting tonight.

Of course I then had one heck of an earache and didn’t sleep well last night so I had to miss work today. It was nice though to sleep in and get caught up on some miscellaneous stuff. The most recent poetry collection at LibriVox filled up and just as I was about to start cataloging, I read a post from Chris, one of our brilliant programmers, that he had implemented a feature I requested that allows people cataloging collections to input a variety of fields at one time. For instance, in a collection of 20 poems, I previously had to enter manually the title, author, and source for each one into a special area called the compilation table. This makes the title and author of individual poems searchable by the catalog. And the source is important to document Public Domain status. I keep track of all this stuff on a spreadsheet and then, by my calculations, would copy and paste from Excel to Firefox 60 times. Yup, 60. And that’s just for the compilation data, similar stuff has to be copied and pasted other places for regular cataloging. Well, Chris made us a brilliant feature that allows us to copy and paste from excel and enter every single bit of compilation data in one go. It made my day. It makes cataloging poetry so much more pleasant! So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a collection to finish cataloging.

Knitting pictures coming later…

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