Sunday, November 30, 2008

Why I do Knit Together

I'm having a 'love my weekend job' day. I keep saying it: One of the best parts of doing Knit Together is preparing the people stories. Oh, sure, getting to do book reviews and yarn reviews are fun in their own rights and ways, but being able to tell the 'back stories' of knitters is an honour and a blessing.

Yesterday I worked on the designer feature for the next issue, and this morning, I received an e-mail back from this issue's Canadian Knitter with incredible information about herself. I've wanted to get together with this person for years -- I've had an inkling that she's an interesting knitter and what she has told me is gobsmack-ingly cool. I hope I do the piece the justice it deserves!

So, while technology upset my day last weekend, this weekend I'm blessed with wonderful information about two more interesting knitters in this great land.

In the rush of day-to-day doings, we don't often pause to take stock of all that we are. But, if we take some time and just think about all the different things we've done in our lives, we get an opportunity to feel good about who we have become. It's also an opportunity to be grateful for the things, good and bad, that have molded us into who we are today.

Every one of us has done something interesting in his or her life. Every one of us has a story in us. For too long, these stories have gone untold.

In this post I urge every reader to sit down, look back, write it down, and feel good about yourself. Then send it to Canadian Guild of Knitters so we can tell your story. Oh, and while you're at it, send a photo!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Still working

Another happy weekend in the office. Knitting contacts weren't as accessible as desired, but I did get some work on web browsing, the projects, and I got all the book reviews done for this issue! Yayy! This happened between phone calls about my sister's psych homework and dinner with the 'kids' -- Barry's son, DIL and grandson.
Julie already has some pieces to proof, and I've still got to write about my Shetland adventure. Where on earth are those words, and why aren't they spilling out of my head?
Here's a photo tease of the Shetlands. It was SO beautiful! What? You were expecting a landscape? Oh, sorry, next time... wait... this IS a landscape... look at those shades of green!

While I was seeking out knitting journals for Web Browsing today I found a Christmas gift for my nephew... it's a book about how things work, and if genetics are anything, he's going to love it! If you have a curious kid on your list, look for The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay. Hmmm... that could be tipping my hand, but I doubt my 10 year old nephew is reading my blog!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Mac conversion anyone?

Last weekend I was at Lucy Neatby's Double Knitting Workshop and Lucy advised she is a "Mac Convert." I just about became one today.

There I was, working away on a piece for the November issue (yes, I'm jumping ahead) when a little 'dialogue' box came up to say an error had occurred. Oh, it gave me the option of saving my file, then told me the memory reference or some such thing was 'full'. Bear in mind I had only worked on this piece. One little one page article, no graphics, no cool stuff. And my memory is full. Yeah, right.

I saved the column of material I could and exited the program. Upon re-entry I see this little memory problem was more wide-spread -- the software hadn't been saving the automatic backups as it is prescribed to do. Grrr...

Fortunately I was able to salvage the second half of the article. UNfortuately, I had to reconstruct the first half from the scratch that is my shorterhand. Grrr...

There will be no Vista for me... I'm having enough trouble with Corel applications in a Windows XP environment.

One of these days I might take my "Mac-ness" to the computer level! I am, afterall, a MacDougall!