The Fish Knits

Well, this took me a while to get up on the blog, but after all the crap going on with copied work and what-not, I thought I ought to get official…

For the record:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License

What this means is that my words are mine alone, and not to be used by others without proper credit. SAY THAT YOU GOT IT HERE. Link back to me. Even better though? Ask me first. It’s good karma.

On the other hand, the images on the site are Copyrighted by me. That means YOU MUST ASK ME FIRST. No question. Ok?

Now then. Let’s get back to the fun, shall we?

Sometimes I think I must be living under a rock or something. Then again, I live with a computer geek, so I guess it’s normal that he would know all about something in the computer universe before I would catch wind of it.

Case in point:

On a whim today I checked my Short Stat page on the Word Press Dashboard. I thought it might be interesting to see what people search for that points them to me, and maybe who my referrers have been. I looked over to the Track back panel and found familiar people who have been linking to me, and one which was not familiar at all. So I clicked on it.

People, there are those out there who grab your stuff off your blog, post it on their site (maybe with a link back to you, maybe not) along with stuff from all over the place on the web (none of the content is theirs) and run Google Ads on their site for which they get paid when someone clicks on them. Dudes, someone out there is making money off MY BLOG ENTRIES. And IT’S NOT ME!! Grrrr. I think, since they do actually link back to me, that there’s nothing I can do about it. It just makes me niggly. As IF!!

You know, maybe I wouldn’t be so annoyed about it if my entry had come up as knitting related or something. But no, it’s out there for all to catch with a search for Teen Swim Wear. Wha…? Come on. And right next to me? Some thing about Freaky MILFs. I’m so proud of my writing now…

On a lighter note, Rosa’s socks got finished on time, and delivered to my friend without a hitch. I hope she liked them! I hope they fit properly! Remember… I have never met the woman.

I am reworking the neck line on Joshua’s Durrow Sweater since it looked really odd the first go ’round. Too almost-v-neck-but-not when it’s supposed to be a crew neck, you know? Anyway, I tried a short cut need to rip back the front of the sweater to the bottom of the neck shaping, add a few rows and change the slope of the decreases so that I can get a more flattering, masculine neckline. So there are a few hours’ work spoken for. Did I mention that the whole thing has been assembled? Yeah. That’ll be fun.

I’m also knitting up a designed-on-the-fly sweater for Evan, which seems to be knitting up really quickly, which is good since I haven’t actually made anything for him since the Blueberry hat, and the Giraffe Sweater before that!

And lastly for today, I leave you with today’s little Yeardley’s find. I was walking home from the local mall, listening to my (new from Christmas) iPod, when I thought- I’m alone. I don’t have Evan with me. I can go into the antiques shop!! This is what I found…

Cool, eh? The child sized ones need to be sanded down and refinished. No biggie. I can do it by hand without much trouble. I think it’s pretty funny though that there is only one of the adult ones! So they’re really more for show than anything. But I like ‘em.

I hope you all had a happy Christmas!

Have you seen this? Every year, Google does a 12 days of Christmas “doodle” for their search page. This year? Well!

Go have a look, and keep checking it out to see how it progresses. Hee hee!

(Oh, and courtesy of Rachel H., this is my new favourite thing on U Tube… I feel your pain, Man!)

As this is the season of Christmas parties, we had a babysitter in for Evan last night. She’s a really sweet girl, lives a few doors down, and has a little sister who’s just itching to be old enough to babysit. Great deal! Evan’s a great kid, generally easy to look after (or so say the babysitters we’ve used) and doesn’t fight the bedtime routine. What he does do though, which is somewhere between funny and perplexing, is tell the babysitters that he must sleep with the light on. Not the night light, like he uses when we’re here, but the room light. He must sleep with the lights completely on. And the door open. Obviously, this is simply a different dynamic than when I put him to bed, since we get home and he’s always sound asleep, just like normal, only with the lights on and sometimes in his t-shirt rather than Jammies (which, truth be told, I don’t mind too much. I have let him do it on occasion…). Last night though, I had to take a picture. When I went in to turn off the light I found this:

Who is this kid? A mini Al Bundy in training? Wow. Legs crossed nonchalantly and his hands shoved in his pants. Love it. (Now that I look at the photo, I realize that I really need to get in there and wash that wall… That gaping hole in the plaster? That would be from Evan kicking his feet against the old, already cracked but painted over after minimal repair lathe and plaster wall. I need to work up the nerve to fix it- I want to do it well. At least all the loose plaster is gone…)

Oh, you came here for some knitting content? Of course. How silly of me.

Wednesday night saw the return of the monthly Bridgehead knit night in the Glebe (3rd Wednesday of the month, for those who are interested!). I was, of course, knitting a sock.

Oh wait. I haven’t mentioned The Socks? A little back story then.

I have a climbing friend, who is a super guy. Sweet man. Normally men hate that descriptor when it’s assigned to them, but I think this guy would go along with it. He’s great. He asked me a while back if he could pay me to make a pair of socks for his wife in time for Christmas. You see, she has big calves. She has a hard time finding socks to fit. She often actually cuts the top off her socks so that they will go around her calves and not bind. Ok, I thought, I have big calves. I can’t find knee high boots that will get around my claves. I can make a pair of socks for myself in about a week and a half if that’s all I knit (and only in spare time. Not, like, around the clock). I usually work on about 72 stitches for my legs. Mind you, I tend to stop the sock before I get to the widest part of my leg… Anyway, I thought that was such a thoughtful gift, really sweet and oddly romantic, that I said of course I’d make a pair of socks for his wife!

The next week, about 3 weeks ago now, my friend turns up at the gym with measurements for me. Really smart, actually. He wrapped a strip of paper around her calf, marked a line, then around her ankle, marked a line, then measured length from where he took one measurement to the other. I couldn’t have asked for better measurements. (Did he do this while she slept I wonder?) I showed him some yarn options and he picked one. We were off to the races.

I set about figuring how many stitches to cast on. This is when I started to wonder about how wise my decision was.

120. One hundred and twenty stitches. That’s almost twice what I cast on for mine. And he wanted them 8-1/2″ from ribbing at the top to the ankle. This is a long, wide sock. Uh oh.

As I mentioned in the last few posts, there hasn’t been a whole lot of knitting time going on around here, what with Evan being sick or injured and needing more supervision than normal, and social commitments, work ramping up for the holidays, etc… The socks are to be delivered tonight at work, so I need to have them done and ready to be delivered by 5pm at the latest. This is where I stand:

Rosa needs a toe. I do like the Shapely Calves though, I must admit. Anyway, I’m outta here. I have 3 or 4 inches to go and a son to entertain! Wish me luck!

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting and do it all the time. While finishing a piece is the plan, you still love the process, and can’t imagine a day going by without giving some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation involves leaving ample space for the stash and supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn ends and you begin.http://marniemaclean.com
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Not too shabby, eh? Ha ha…

No knitting content to report here today, I’m afraid. It’s still secret stuff all the time, but I’m about to start a pair of socks for a friend to give his wife for Christmas.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any knitting done this morning, even though I usually have Monday mornings to knit. Instead of taking Evan to school, I took him to CHEO. Last night he fell out of bed in his sleep and broke his collar bone. Poor little guy is a really tough kid though, was very brave (which kind of breaks your heart in a 3 year-old) and seems to be doing pretty well. He’s not really in much pain if he’s careful, and the break isn’t bad enough to warrant any special treatment. He can move his arm, and can still play. I’ll have to tell his teachers at school not to let the other kids climb on him though…

I am very much aware of the fact that in the grand scheme of things, we’re getting off lightly. We have had our share of parenting troubles, for sure, but really? It’s nothing. Though we’re getting pretty familiar with CHEO these days. We were just there last week having a surgery consult, which has resulted in Evan being scheduled for an operation at the end of January. Nothing very serious, but the idea of relinquishing my son into the hands of relative strangers who will sedate him, cut him open and sew him back up again is more than a little daunting. In fact, I’m fully expecting to feel like I’m handing my heart over to them at the same time, ripped straight from my chest. You can bet I’ll have my knitting with me then.

You know? It never just rains. It pours.