lolajl: February 2008 Archives

You know how it is when you've got a band-aid and you're faced with a dilemma? If you rip off the band-aid slowly, it huuuurts for a good long while. If you rip it off fast, the pain is sharp indeed. The ultimate choice comes down to your pain threshold. In this case . . . I'll rip it off fast. Nope - the First Company is a no-go for now. Bummer - I was really looking forward to getting the job search over and done with.

I know from the test results so far that I really do need to update my programming knowledge. That's kinda hard to do when you need to concentrate on getting work that pays real money and you don't have the financial resources or the backing of a company willing to give you the needed training. By the way . . . make darned sure that your company backs you up on giving you real, meaningful training to keep your skills up to date and employable. If they give you the song and dance, it's probably time to look for a more supportive company. Believe me, I know from experience.

So . . . with the Purple Polo Sweater - this is where I'm at right now. As I said, brown yarn with dark purple yarn - hard to see what you're doing. A couple times I had to rip out the crocheted yarn - this was kind of painful because the sweater yarn is 90/10 wool and mohair. I finally took some of the green shetland yarn I had on hand to outline the middle stitch of the 3 stitches I crocheted up - that helped a lot. Next up - the sleeves. I'm not going to cut the steeks until I get the sleeves done - I want to make sure these come off the right length and will fit into the armholes.

I'm taking a bit of hiatus from this sweater and working on the Briggs & Little Hybrid Sweater. After reading the instructions in KWoT, I've finally understood her pithy directions. So, a big roadblock down for me, especially after I had to knit on 2 more inches to the sleeves (what is it with me and sleeves???) and then joining the body in. I'm still not quite in the clear as to how the saddle portion works, but I'm sure I'll get it, eventually. One thing I can say for sure - more hybrid sweaters are going to be be in my future. I may even get to knit two matching hybrid sweaters for my nephews!

Well . . . it looks like Second Company is a no-go. They'll keep my resume on file, though. I'm not upset about this. There'll be other fish to catch (although it would be REALLY nice if I could catch that Job Offer pronto!). Still waiting on First Company.

I've been trolling job ad sites lately. Here's a really nice gem that I came across earlier today, which was obviously written by someone in the HR Department:

Direct experience in the installation, configuration and administration of Cold Fusion Enterprise Servers and Microsoft IIS either in a development or production environment are a must. Thorough use of cascade style sheets and modular designs to promote re-use of functionality from an object-oriented design approach is very desirable. Strong knowledge of graphic design tools such as Adobe CS3 is required. Direct experience in the rendering of Excel-like functionality within a web based environment is required; the ability to support mapping financial administration processes according to organizational, tiered decompositions represented within the web applications is desirable. Web designers with financial management systems background is a strong plus. "

There's a lot of problems with this description of the advertised Web Developer position. Here's what they really want: an IT administrator who, as an graphic artist, can create complex graphics and is experienced with typography and the fundamentals of layout, and as a programmer, is able to create modularized code that works like interacting objects (Ed. Cascade style sheets and object-oriented design have nothing to do with each other - believe, I understand this, from what little of OOD I understand.), and finally, as a database administrator, is able to read databases consisting of hundreds of linked tables and cross-tables. That's 4 full-time job functions all rolled into one position.

I'm also very certain that they're never, ever going find one single candidate who can fulfill high expectations and be happy with a $75K salary. This person very likely has left to set up his own company and make millions of dollars as CEO and leaving the grunt work to others.

As an aside, crocheting steeks in a dark-colored, variegated garment in dim light - not good.

The body is all but waiting to be cut up in the armholes and in the front. I've made sure to measure, of course, since once it's cut you can't rip back. I need to crochet up the stitches to be cut. I like that way because it's neater and I don't have to sew down the edges. The pullover is actually darker than this picture - I used flash. Here's another closeup shot; the colors are more like it appears in person:

Right now I'm waiting to find out the results from my job interviews. Recruiter is supposed to be getting in touch with Company for feedback, and Second Company is supposed to get back to me sometime today. I'm watching the Gmail Notifier icon but no incoming mail from Second Company. I really should go and check up on the job ad websites that I've got bookmarked.

Now that it's officially out in the open (if you check Two Geeks and a Baby), I can state that I'm going to be an aunt again! It'll be good to Kai to have a sibling so close in age.

I am making a lot of progress on the sweater - it's that good. As you can see, I've got the placket steeks in place. Now I've got to come to a pause here and think about how I'm going to handle the neck area. I've been going through Meg Swansen's patterns for ideas on how to do this. Other references for similar designs assume that you're knitting flat and binding off stitches to form the curved neckline, so these references are not as much of a guide.

Armhole length is 6 1/2", and the placket length is 4 1/2". I'm aiming for a 10" armhole length (I like to have a bit of room under my arms), so that leaves 3 1/2 more inches to knit. The only real question is how many stitches on either side of the placket steeks to put on hold. I'll have to think about this. As for the sleeves, I'm coming to a consensus of "knit the sleeves in the round, then back and forth for the set-in area".

Oh, and guess what? I've got 2 in-person job interviews with different company tomorrow and Friday! Wish me luck . . . it'd be really nice to be sure that I've got spending money for MDSWF.

Recently I was contacted by a reader who wanted to leave a comment, but wasn't sure what to do, so she emailed me directly. As I've stated in the past and will state again, you have to sign in to leave comments because otherwise, if I leave this open to everyone, I will just be bombarded with spam comments that are very sleazy in nature, along with legitimate comments. I really don't care to spend my time wading through these to do a mass delete and the possibility overlooking legitimate comments. If you have a spam filter set up for your email account, you'll know very well what I'm talking about.

MovableType 4 has the ability to create users and give them access on commenter level. This is a good alternative if you don't have LiveJournal, Vox or wordpress.com, or TypeKey accounts. There's also OpenID if you have one. Note: People with Blogger accounts can now sign in via OpenID, if you have administrator access to your blogspot site. All you need to do is use your Blogspot URL to sign in. Here's a post that explains how to do so, and also here's a bit of more info here. OpenID is an open-source protocol that aims to provide an easy, convenient way to sign in.

But what if you don't have these accounts? Like I said, MT has its own setup, and if you look at image above, you'll see that MovableType is highlighted. Click on "Sign Up", and you should see this form. The asterisked fields are required. Pick a username that you can remember, and make note of the password that you create and keep in safe place. Also, pick a password reminder that you can remember easily.

The last view you will see in this signup process is the "Thanks for signing up" notice. (Note to bloggers using MT4 on your hosting site: you'll need to go into System Overview, go to Preferences, and select General. Enter whatever email address you prefer to use for sending out MT-generated email. Otherwise, the confirmation email will never, ever get sent out.)

Next, check your email. If you have spam filters enabled, check that too, please. You should see an email like the one above. The URL is a very, very long one, so if your email program cuts it in half, copy the first half and paste into the browser URL field, then copy the second half and past it in RIGHT AFTER the first half, without any spaces, and submit the URL. You should then be redirected back to the original post where you're commenting.

If this seems rather involved, this is a procedure you'll only have to do once. Your username and password will be recorded in my system for future comments.

I hope this was of help! If you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask me.

No, I still haven't finished the Raglan Sweater. Nor gotten back to the Hybrid Sweater. I guess I'm not looking forward to sewing up the tops and bottoms, and trying to figure out the pithy directions.

Instead, I've been knitting this all week, and here's what I have to show. It's going to be a polo pullover . . . I've got the placket stitches all bound off and steeks cast on (you can't see it because there's that funky stockinette stitch rolling going on). I'm a bit concerned that it might be just teensy bit too small for me, but Hubby assures me that it looks just fine (isn't that what husbands are supposed to be saying?). And I think blocking will take care of this problem just fine.

What I haven't decided yet is if I'm going to knit the sleeves in the round or in the flat. As you can see, It's going to be set-in drop shoulder - I've got 16 stitches on hold at either side. As for the neckline, it's going to be round, and I'll cast on another steek and decrease there. I'm also not sure if I'm going to have a fold-down collar or not. And I'm thinking about shaped shoulders, which would mean short rows. Is it possible to have shaped shoulders in the round? lots of thinking to do in the coming week. Maybe I should get started on sewing up the raglan sweater when I reach a good stopping point. I need to have at least one FO by the end of the month.

Right now I'm thinking about ribbing patterns. I really like the moss seed stitch and have been looking for patterns to knit in the round. The stitch books I have are all for flat knitting, so there's some rearranging that I need to do. I've also been meaning to play around with Knit Visualizer. So, here are two patterns I've come up with.

Here's Moss Rib Stitch, version one:

And here's Moss Rib Stitch, version two:

Which would work better? The plan is to knit this on 3.50 or 3.75mm needles, and then switch to 4.00mm needles and knit plain stockinette stitch. I'm planning to get this started tonite, so if y'all could weigh in on this in the comments section, I'd very much appreciate this. Thanks!

Some people just do the most darnedst thing. I'm pretty sure this sort of thing wouldn't happen on the DC Metro, but one never knows . . .

THIS is the moment a group of Thrill seekers hiJack-son a London tube train.

Passengers were left open-mouthed when a group of commuters - including a suited man - got up from their seats and performed the dance featured in Michael Jackson's music video for hit Thriller.

[From Thrillseekers hiJack-son train | The Sun |HomePage|News]

So, I've gotten the needed extra rows all knit onto the sweater bottom, and now I'm ready to graft it back on. A tedious job to be sure, but it's gotta be done.

Hubby and I are going over friends' home for Super Bowl game. And I need a good mindless project. I could work on the back of the Mendocino cardigan, but I'm not quite in the mood for battling with slightly stiff yarn. I do have something in mind for mindless knitting.

Here's what I envision for this swatch of my handspun yarn, knit with 4.00mm needles: a pullover with a placket. I've been looking through my magazines and patterns, and browsed through Ravelry for a nice, simple pattern. I couldn't quite find the one pattern to unite all desired features, so I'm gong to have to sort of just take a bit from each and pull it all together. Wish me luck!

Yes, that's the yarn that is used for my online avatar and in the image above . . .