I want to ask everyone who has a website of their own to do me a little favor.  Take a moment to read about hotlinking. The very short version is that hotlinking is inappropriately using an image off of someone else's website.  It's not a good thing to do.  It is an easy thing to do accidentally (and with no malicious intent) if you're not all that comfortable with setting up and managing websites.  I happened to notice someone was doing it with one of my pictures yesterday (likely by accident and certainly with no malicious intent).  Since it is [...]

Have you looked around lately (those of you in the northern hemisphere at least)?  See those leaves all over your yard?  Or at least all over my yard in the recent pictures?  Have you noticed the chill in the air?  Or failing that, the barrage of Christmas decorations in the stores?  All that bodes very well.  Not because it's almost time for the annual frenzy of gluttony and capitalism with which we mark the end of the year.  I'm kind of a grinch.  I don't really do any of the winter holidays at all.  Nope.  It bodes well because it's [...]

I painted my fingernails with a deeply immodest shade of glittery red polish, and I'm finding the constant flashes of shimmery awesomeness seriously distracting.  I try to look at the stitches on my needles and am sidetracked by the shiny.  It's possible I'm just easily distracted (um, it's more than possible, it's medically documented), but this is just ridiculous.  I could just take the polish off, but that simply won't do.  Instead I'll just have to keep it on all the time for a week or two until I get used to it.  This will be the perfect excuse for [...]

Calumny:  ˈka-ləm-nē   noun - a misrepresentation intended to harm another's reputation I checked my email this morning and was more than a bit surprised to find that I had received 300 new messages in the space of a few minutes.  Surprise quickly gave way to dismay as it became clear that these were bounced spam messages, many offering what purported to be the finest in male enhancement and weight loss opportunities. I called The Boy.  The Boy is possessed of a variety of very useful skills, among them strong email-fu.  I whimpered in dismay.  He said "Joe Job" in an [...]

More non-knitting stuff today.  I promise next time there will be pictures of yarn or at least discussion of it.  We're off to the Great Lakes Fiber Show this weekend, and that should be good for some yarn-y indulgence. On the plumbing front, the dismemberment stage seems to have reached its conclusion, and the reconstruction has begun.  We now have drywall instead of holes.  It is an improvement, but the upstairs bathroom still has no actual plumbing fixtures, just a lot of pipes.  This fairly severely impedes its utility as a bathroom.  Despite this rather glaring lack, I am assured [...]

The plumbers are here.  They are competently and industriously doing...stuff.  From a lay perspective, it looks and sounds rather as if they're trying their damnedest to murder my house by driving a stake through its heart.  I am finding it disconcerting.  It is rather disruptive.  Allow me to demonstrate. This is my very favorite spot in my whole house. See that bookcase?  It has a twin on the other side of the fireplace.  I love those bookcases, love that whole wall, it's the first thing I see when I walk in my house and I just adore it.  The chair [...]