MarQ1

Rather cold again. Dark outside too.

Please Note

Please note that as I am not a great photographer, I really don’t care if somebody copies an image of mine and uses it for personal use. I do object when someone links to an image sitting on server space I’m paying for.

I’ve altered the image a bit. If the borrower has no objection to the modification, great. Otherwise she can copy and crop the image or remove the link from her site.

This is, btw, my most-linked-to image.

Irritated

I guess I’m just irritated at the enormous amount of spam comments I’ve been getting lately. That’s with some rather stringent filtering in place. It’s been a minimum of fifteen minutes a day housekeeping. I’ve got little enough to post about to spend half the time on spam—it becomes a chore.

I’ve turned on the feature that puts a comment in moderation if the commenter doesn’t already have an approved comment.

And I’ve turned off the visitor count. To much trouble to filter out the bogus entries.

Yep. I’ve slacked off a bit. Too much stuff to keep track of.

There are six different projects on this table. Most are new.

Work has been time-consuming, to put it generously. It has also sucked out most of my sociability and creativity. Well—the sociability has always been suspect and the creativity has been harnessed into massive system redesign, business requirements document (BDR) review and system conversion testing. The work has a purpose—food on the table and liquor on the bar—but it does take the thrill out of sitting down at the Mac after work for anything other than a few mindless internet games. Netflick and TV have dominated, though. I haven’t really cooked since before Thanksgiving. I’m just tired.

J made macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight. Fully from scratch. Good.

The knitting has, as you can see, resumed. Not that it came to a total halt.

This kid mohair/silk scarf that you see here was begun right after we got back from Hudson. It took me a while to come up with a suitable pattern that flattered that yarn on the front and the reverse. It took a while and I think I got there. Only one hitch. It feels like fiberglass on my neck. And J’s neck, and I’m sure it will feel the same on the originally intended recipient’s neck. Seriously disliking mohair now.

Since then, I’ve made several false starts on a hat, ending up with the purple thing in the upper right of the top photo. Done a bit of swatching for another whippet sweater: that’s what the lavender yarn is for. Started a scarf for a holiday present for J’s sister. Spent a bit of time swatching to no end.

J took me to see And the Little Dog Laughed on Broadway Friday night. Very funny. Julie White is superb and makes the show. As does the brief moment of male nudity. Who knew Johnny was so well hung?

Here I am complaining my life isn’t gay enough, and, lo and behold, I’m #1 and #2 on a MSN Ireland search for “gay cycling dreams.”

I bet I’m not the only one who’s disappointed.

I wish Apple would make its keyboards water-resistant. This is keyboard number 3. Water, this time.

Twelve bogus visitors.

One spam caught in the moderator queue.

Forty-nine requests blocked for pretending to be something they weren’t.

No spam caught by the blacklist. The other filters got there first.

This is a typical Tuesday, a peak day apparently for s‍p‍a‍m‍mers.

I had to bring Birch home with me. I couldn’t bring myself to frog in the office. I started swatching for a sock instead.

Last night, I finished the second ball of J&S laceweight about a dozen stitches shy of the end of round 103 of F&F. Two hanks of 252 yds in 103 rounds. There are only—only, he says—190 rounds. I began to worry again that my gauge was off and perhaps I should have used #6 Am needles.

I fired up Excel and started counting. At the end of round 103, I have knit 28,576 stitches, not counting the frogged and tinked ones. At the end of round 190, I will have knit 120,688, more or less. I have, therefore, knit 23.7% of the shawl, excluding the crochet bind-off. To that point, the shawl should take 2,130 yds of yarn, or 94.6% of the stated 2,250-yard requirement. After the bind-off, I’ll probably be right on target. Woo hoo! Mathematically, I’ve got gauge.

BTW, the pattern calls for 10 225 yd skeins and I bought 11 252 yd skeins, so I should be fine. And have leftovers.

The glass-half-empty view, of course, is that, as of the end of round 105, I haven’t even knit a quarter of the shawl.

I think I’ll go read now.

New estimates of legitimate traffic to my site are significantly lower than previously estimated. I average under 50 real visitors per day, though it looks like more when bots mimic people. Very few of you could click on 31 links in under 3 minutes.

Counters have been reset accordingly.

Since determining what is legit is more art than science, it would be best not to take one’s stats too seriously.