Oh. Hello, June.

Seems I’ve been spending a lot more time than I thought I would over at the knitting blog and at ravelry. Wish I could say I was knitting as much. That’s the way it goes, even though I have at least two gifts to knit in a very short period.

So what else has been keeping me busy, you ask? Certainly work. Now that I’m not going to be continuing in my present position, I seem to be busier than ever.

Blogging will continue to be light for a while. See ya when I see ya.

WordCamp2008 Israel: The Leftovers

Forgotten Things:When Hanan Cohen set up the WordCamp Israel RSS aggregator following the blogs of those registered, I went looking specifically for blogs that were hosted here on WordPress.com and came across this neat site that explains step-by-step in Hebrew how to set up a WordPress.com blog, Eden Orion’s “How to set up a blog in WordPress“. Very much needed and really useful. (Just be aware that WordPress.com is holding its collective breath waiting for the latest update to WordPress (2.7) to be implemented on WordPress.com sometime very, very soon. This will immediately outdate all the “under the hood” screenshots, but the basic info is still the same.)

Another fabulous resource for both COM and ORG users, in English this time, is the post that Lorelle wrote following her presentation at last year’s WordCampIsrael. If you haven’t read it yet, or even if you have, go read it.

Unexpected Surprises: After WordCamp2008 Israel was over, it was fun browsing other people’s summaries and reviews of the event. Many of the presenters have already put up their slideshows on their sites and it’s good to catch up on part of what I missed in the alternate sessions. Here are the ones I’ve found so far:

• Good Foundations for Blogging on COM or Blogli and Social Media and Blogging – Miriam Schwab
• Are Bloggers Believable? – Sharon Greenberg (Hebrew link)
  
• SEO and WordPress – Compucall (site often unavailable; try Google’s cached page)
• Interactive Video Blogging – Kaltura

I like to follow the links that people put in their posts because many times it leads to unexpectedly useful information. This time, however, following a link in someone’s post left me with my mouth open when I found that a WP plug-in developer is was using without permission a copyrighted image from my flickr photostream on their website’s About page. Rather ironic given the nature of the plug-in. (Update as of November 24: the image has been removed following my emailed request.)

Sorry for the lack of linkage to the website in question, but I’m still pondering what exactly to do about it.  I’ve been through the copyright mill a couple of times after writing an extensive FAQ about knitting and copyright, but this is really the first time I’ve been on the receiving end myself. Feel free to share your thoughts/suggestions in the comments.

WordTwitterFlickrRavelryQypeCampMeetup: WordCamp is an ideal opportunity to create an event mash-up with my other online activities and I was really sorry that my belated attempts to get together with fellow WordPress users from ravelry’s Yarn&Felafel group didn’t pan out. It’d be really great to have a meet-up at the next big event. If I’m already taking the day off from work and heading into the city, meeting my other online friends is an extra plus.  Count on it happening next year!

Ready, Set, Knit! (…Maybe)

It’s true. This is a post about knitting. Don’t blink or it just might disappear.

Once upon a time, when I had oodles of free time, summer was my planning season for when the weather finally cooled down enough to permit knitting to commence. Unlike my former home in Minnesota, the coast of Israel is warm 10 months of the year and not having central A/C is the biggest deterrent to my knitting year-round.  The weather is changing, enough so to get me thinking about picking up my 3 projects languishing in the UFO cabinet. This year I won’t be dashed on the shores by the Siren Song of NaKniSweMo. Oh, no, no, no. I’ll be content to just finish the current lot of projects. (Though I am coming to the belated realization that the Kaffe Fassett “Kill’em Cushion Cover” may eternally be a UFO, as it requires some serious solitude and quiet to work on. I haven’t seen either of those in months/years.)

With one magazine subscription and few online knitting newsletters, I’ve tampered down the constant pull of new projects to a minimum, but the temptation to start new projects instead of turning UFOs into FOs is certainly there.  Who doesn’t love to start something fresh?!  One-Skein Wonders, which I received recently, could be my Achilles’s heel! (Woo hoo! Now I need to knit a camera cozy!)

Speaking of newsletters, does anyone else think the noise-to-signal ratio on KnittingDaily is nearing the breaking point? When they first started out, it was pretty low. Now I’m sorely tempted to unsubscribe from the newsletter to avoid getting the at least twice to three times a week ads in my mailbox. I think Knitty is much more in tune with its subscribers.

To my delight, I discovered today that Ravelry members blogging on WordPress.COM now have their own group. Rock on!

And to spammers targeting WordPress.COM’s “knit” tag, take note of this important announcement from the fellow who does the clean up http://mark.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/knitting-a-tip/ (Sorry for the lack of linkage.) If you are knitblogging here on WordPress.com and surf the WP.com tag surfer, I can hear you chuckling from here.

Top search terms-June 2008

Some of the top search terms for finding this blog from the past 30 days :

wysiwyg blog (yep, got that)

headers for cutline (yep, got those)

ravelry serape (from NaKniSweMo-so got those)

photoimpact x3 goodies (got those, not x3 specific, though)

pi presets (yep, got those)

gourmet yarn store israel (got those, too; now with Google Maps goodness.)

wordpress knitting theme viewer (er,um…)

dover file download (sort of, but pi-related)

goodies pi (yep, got those)

“the flavor graveyard is” (hm, thinking the Halloween post got those)

wordpress.com +flickr slideshow (sadly, don’t got those)

p.i.’s tool (not quite sure about that one; pi’s got so many of ‘em)

uol photoimpact (yep, got those)

blog+moodstream (um, not really. sure would be cool, though)

pi tutorial (yep, got those)

cutline headers (yep, got those-see above)

just jennifer blog (certainly got those)

photoimpact tutorial (got those)

israel (definitely got those)

world record for blog with no comments (wt*?)

If I search Google for that last one, my Live Hatikva post is #2 in the search results. =:-O

Work with me, people! Not for nothing is Crabby over there on the sidebar.

What about Leo?

This is the first project that I’ve knit in a long time that has decided to fight back.

Having worked in a yarn shop doesn’t exempt you from doing stupid things, like changing yarns at the last minute and casting on without doing a swatch. I did do some homework before casting on because I already noticed that even on the ball band, the yarn I was planning on using had a slightly different gauge than the yarn used in the pattern. The original sweater called for 129 sts for the front and back pieces knitted flat, i.e. 258 sts for both pieces, and far too many for my yarn stats. When you’re working with 40″ worth of stitches, even a difference of half a stitch per 4 inches can make a dramatic change in the width of the finished sweater!

As I was also planning on knitting Leo in the round, I checked on Ravelry to see if anyone had done so previously and posted in their blog about it. I was very happy to find Meg’s post about her experience. Her numbers were different, but she pointed out the pitfalls for anyone knitting the pattern in the round. The way my numbers worked out, with 238 sts for both front and back (119 sts per piece, with 2 K sts on each end, not three), the center point for front and back moved from the middle knit stitch in the pattern repeat to the middle purl stitch.

Joining for knitting in the round is usually not a problem for me, but this time…arrrgh! I don’t know whether the circular needle I used was just too short or whether it was particularly twisty, but after (I kid you not) three attempts at getting those blasted 238 stitches joined without them twisting over the needle, I was just about ready to divorce Leo without a second thought. Fortunately, though, we worked it out.

As for the likelihood of actually finishing my chosen sweater during the month of November, I have my doubts. For the meantime Leo greets me in the morning with a cup of coffee and sends me wearily to sleep at night. I hope I have as much determination to finish him as it seems he does me.