Didn't take too long

As you can see there is a new look to the blog. I decided that if I was going to change then really change it. The new blogger is amazing. No more working in html to get things onto the blog. You pick the page element you want to change (Blogs I read, Finished Projects), type in the information and done. You can move the page elements around easily-no more scrolling through the html and trying to find something and then move it somewhere else. Well done Blogger!!! I also like that posts are published immediately. No more waiting. No more watching the circle saying 30%, then 50% and then it says that it is done. But you look at your blog and it isn't there. Sometimes it can be days before it shows up. Spellcheck works on my new computer too. As long as I remember to hit the button, there should be no more spelling mistakes.

New Blogger

I switched to the new Blogger weeks ago but haven't played with many of the new features. Since it is 11:30 on Saturday night I figure this is a good time to play. I am going to try the feature for customizing the design of my blog. Of course, this could back fire for the time being until I get everything where I want it to be. Please be patient while I play!!

Store Hours

I have been thinking about changing our store hours starting in February. Many people ask if we stay open late any nights of the week. I am in the store 5-6 days and teach at least 2 nights a week. This doesn't include time for post office, bank, paperwork or my other 2 businesses. I am thinking of changing the hours on Fridays from 10-5:30 to 12-7. Please comment on your thoughts. If you aren't on blogger and want to comment, please email me.

Somedays I am surprised by how many people read my blog. I get people asking every day about Roko and Melo. Today I had a lady in the store who came to buy Noro-she heard it was on sale from her sister who lives in England and reads my blog.

I have been knitting a scarf-that's it. The week between Christmas and New Year's is always incredibly busy. We get out of town visitors who are in the area visiting family. We have had visitors from all over Ontario. We've also had a few visitors from the US including Betty.

Boxing Week Sales

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas. Beth and I had dinner Christmas Eve and on Christmas day with family friends. Both days were good but we couldn't stay long. Roko is still to little to leave for too long in the crate.

Speaking of Roko-he chewed on his first pair of shoes today. I am not happy!!! Luckily I caught him right away so there aren't any marks.

I decided around midnight tonight that we should offer some specials for people who visit the store this week. The list is too long to write but the notables are 15% off sock yarns (not including Bearfoot) and 20% off Noro.

New Berroco

Here are some pictures from the new Berroco books. If you double click on the pictures, you can enlarge them to see better.

The first book is Yin & Yang #262. All seasons, all ages, all sizes. The book uses different yarns including Ultra Alpaca and Pure Merino. The Pure Merino just arrived in Heather Colours-the shade cards aren't on the internet yet.


The second book is #255 for a new yarn called Bonsai. Of course I forgot a ball of yarn to tell you what it is made of. It is a ribbon type yarn with small slubs in it.


Berroco will be adding the new yarns and shade cards to their website at the end of January.

More Christmas and I knit something

These are 2 of the Christmas gifts that I received from Bev. She picked up the sheep on a trip to England. Very fitting with knit vest and golf shoes. I always carry a leather bag at the trade shows so she bought me a new red one. The only problem is that I didn't plan on red for the upcoming show so I have to knit some red to go with the bag. This is going to be tough because we leave for San Diego on January 12-not much time left. I have a scarf planned which will go with my suede jacket and then I am designing a shawl right now.

We received a new yarn in from Gedifra. It is a combination of yarns knotted together. I knit up Sally Melville's Shape it Scarf to see how it would work. I think I should have made the ends shorter but it is done now so it will be wrapped around a couple of times.

Christmas gifts and more playing with the computer

I forgot to mention a gift from my mom. She is making a scrap book for me and another one for Beth. Unfortunately her printer broke so they weren't done in time. The first page of mine is pictures from my high school and university graduation. It seems so long ago!!! There are some great pictures of us as kids going to Disney, playing baseball and hanging out with our friends.

When I write my newsletter on Constant Contact I can only insert one picture for each topic. Sometimes there is more than one picture that I want to show so today I played with making this happen. There is software that can be purchased to do this for Windows but I didn't want to buy anything else for the computer right now so I did some research and figured this out. On the Mac side I add the pictures to a program called Pages. Then I save them as a pdf file. From there I can transfer them to a jpeg file and voila-now I have one picture but it has many pictures in it. This is a sample showing some of the new garments from the spring Debbie Bliss magazine called Summer Essentials. This magazine uses her Pure Silk, Cashmerino Baby, Cotton Cashmere and Cotton DK.

If you can believe, spring Berroco arrived this morning. Cathy is working today so I haven't had a chance to look at the books yet.

We received some new patterns from Black Purl Designs yesterday. Patrick is knit using Takhi's Donegal Tweed.

Sandstorm is knit using Silk Garden from Noro.

Stained Glass is knit using Noro Kureyon and a solid worsted weight yarn.

Mom and Dad are leaving for Myrtle Beach tomorrow morning so we did Christmas last night. After dinner out we went back to their house to open gifts. Last Christmas we gave them small stockings to fill for us. They had lots of fun with it so this year they went out and bought 3 foot stockings for each of us and filled them. We got gift certificates to Tim Horton's, Swiss Chalet and Jack Astor's. There was candy, chocolate and pajamas-all the stocking essentials. They also found some neat things that will take up way too much space to go into detail. Thanks Mom and Dad!!

Spring Rowan

There are 2 new yarns from Rowan.
Bamboo is a tape yarn with a mini-magazine of patterns to go with the yarn.
Damask is a blend of Linen and Viscose. Patterns for this are in Rowan #41.
There are 6 new colours of Summer Tweed and a new Summer Tweed magazine.
In Handknit cotton DK there are 10 new colours.
Kid Silk Haze has 4 new colours.

There is a new yarn from RYC called Jeans. The name doesn't fit the yarn-it isn't denim coloured. The yarn is an aran weight cotton with marled colours. The cover jacket for the new RY magazine is amazing.
There are new colours of Natural Silk Aran with amazing patterns.

I don't have any pictures but I did see all the new magazines. Lots of great sweaters. They are getting back to the traditional Rowan. Stylish but not wild.

Shoes, Roko and something I knit

Roko has an infatuation with the water dish. He loves to play with it, drag it around the kitchen, try to pick it up and nothing is better than getting his feet into it.
























At knitting guild last week a few ladies were making felted mittens. I took the pattern, adjusted it and knit it out of Tussock chunky from Naturally. I still need to felt this-it looks like an oven mitt right now.


I ran to Yorkdale (a huge shopping mall in Toronto) on Monday to get a program for my computer. Of course I had to check out the shoe stores. I finally found something that I like. These are Geox, made in Italy, very comfortable and purple. Can't get any better than this.

Roko

This picture was taken with Photo Booth on my computer. You sit in front of the computer and have your picture taken. I don't have my printer connected to the new computer yet. Once this is done I can download more pictures.

Roko wasn't exactly happy with us for trying to hold his head straight.

In the past week he seems to have given up yarn. Now his love is socks. There are at least 30 dog toys in the apartment but he wants socks!!

Beth and mom are at the airport to pick up dad. They have a bag of sandwiches and treats ready for him. Refried beans at every meal doesn't make him happy.

I saw the spring Rowan last week but have been too busy to comment on it. I did get to see Rowan #41. The sweaters are very 'wearable'. Nothing outlandish. Handknit DK cotton is being used alot in the magazine. I remember there being at least 2 sweaters for men that looked great. Of course I left the notes in the store so I will post these tomorrow.

Progress Made

I finally figured out how to move iTunes to the new computer. Apple won't let you plug your iPod into the new computer and transfer the songs. They figure that you will share the songs with everyone-I guess it's a copyright issue. I had to download my songs onto a flash drive, load them onto the Windows side, copy to the Mac side and then download into iTunes. I now have to plug in my iPod, delete everything from it and then download again.

I also got my Simply Accounting moved over tonight. This is huge because that is the most important thing on my computer.

Tomorrow night will be making the printer work and everything is done!!

If you are thinking of changing to an iMac I would suggest it. Working the Mac and Windows at the same time is great. I would also suggest getting someone to transfer everything over for you!!

I knit about 2 rows on Kilcar today in the store. We received a shipment from Fleece Artist and Hand Maiden so I was busy putting them away. Customers kept coming in as well. I have to chuckle when I am knitting and a customer comes in and says, 'It must be nice to knit all day.' I wish. They are many days when the needles aren't touched.

More computer fun

I am not a stupid person!! I can find my way around a computer!!

That said, I have spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday playing with this thing. It really isn't too bad but there are some things that could have been explained better. When you read some of the books it is like they are written in Chinese.

I couldn't get the internet hooked up for the life of me. It finally hit me that I needed an Ethernet cable which I didn't have. Of course this was Sunday night after everything was closed. I got the cable yesterday morning and right away I was connected. So simple but so hard.

When you buy a new Mac it has something on it called BootCamp so that you can use both Windows and Mac. To switch between the 2 you must restart your computer. I loaded onto the Windows side all the programs I needed, Word, Simply Accounting, my emails-with address book, etc.

I went to Toronto yesterday afternoon to the Apple store and bought the new Parallels program. This lets me run a Windows window while I am working in Mac. No more restarting the computer. Again, the book was helpful but a few more pages would have made everything very simple. I got it all running but had problems with the Windows window. It was taking up most of my screen and I couldn't do anything to make it smaller. After about 2 hours I started playing with every button and it finally worked. Again so simple but so hard. Now that I am running Parallels, I have to reload all my programs into Windows. Wish I had known this Friday night!!

I am writing this post from the Mac site and the window is a bit different. Just above your post there is a tool bar. The Mac toolbar doesn't have everything that the Windows tool bar has. I will be doing most of Blogger on Windows.

All in all, I am liking the new computer. I think it will take some time to adjust to Mac.

Of course, no knitting has been done. No sleep either.

Gotta run and open the store. I could work on this all day!!

iMac

The commercials finally got me!!! I went out on Wednesday night and looked at an iMac. Thursday morning I was back at BestBuy and purchased the iMac with 24" monitor. It is as big as a tv screen!! I have both Windows and Mac software on the computer.

I want to say that all is going well with the switch but there are a few glitches. Hopefully I will work them out tonight and tomorrow. A trip to the Apple store in Toronto on Monday is going to help as well.

• my iPod won't load onto the new computer
• I downloaded our poker account onto the new computer but couldn't remember the password. I sent off an email to get it and my email provider isn't sending it through. Of course you can't phone the poker site. Beth wanted to play this afternoon so there were a few harsh words at our house.
• I have to remember the rest of my passwords as well. Most of them are saved on the other computer so the program or website just opens up.
• I need to find out how to get my email addressed out of Outlook and onto the new computer.
• until I get a program called Parellels, I have to restart the computer to move between Windows and Mac software.
• I am still getting used to the mouse. There isn't a right and left click which is different.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!!

Obviously there will be no knitting done in the next few days. I am almost done the back on Kilcar-should be completed while in the store on Tuesday.

Roko is doing well. He is a clumsy puppy which makes us laugh when watching him play. He can be running along and just fall over.

Puppies need a lot of attention

Things have been very busy in my house. Roko needs to go out every 1/2 hour so there is lots of running up and down the stairs. He can go up the stairs but won't go down. He has to go out at least 3 times during the night so I am a bit sleep deprived. And he really, really likes yarn!!

Wannietta worked in the store on Saturday with her daughter Amanda. She took a couple of pictures of Amanda with Roko.

I haven't picked up my needles in a week but I think I will start back on Kilcar tomorrow in the store.

I forgot to tell you about our shopping trip in the last post. We didn't choose to go over American Thanksgiving-it was the only weekend that worked for everyone. It took 2 hours to cross the border!! A 7.5 hour drive turned into 10 hours. We quickly checked into the hotel and ran to the mall. Cheesecake Factory for dinner and shopping-who would complain about that? The mall opened at 8 am on Saturday morning and we were waiting for the doors to open. The King of Prussia Mall is amazing. Nordstrom, 2 Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, JC Penney and Sears. I got a winter coat and new pair of boots. Just one pair-shoe shopping was actually very disappointing. We got Christmas presents for the kids on our list-thank you Discovery Channel Store. The back of the Expedition was very full on the way home. Luckily the lady at the border didn't ask very many questions and let us go.

Roko comes home

Dad and Beth picked Roko up this morning. So far Melo loves him. They run up and down the hall of our apartment chasing eachother.

Roko slept in his crate this afternoon in the store. Beth had a meeting so I got to babysit. Roko loves yarn-especially the expensive stuff!! Melo had a rest and kept an eye on Roko. Samantha asked where Melo's name comes from. He is named after Carmelo Anthony, a basketball player.

I thought that it was about time to show some knitting. Here is the back of Kilcar. I have about 20 more rows to knit until the armhole shaping.

Dad is leaving in the morning for 2 weeks in Hoduras. This trip is going to be a bit more relaxing than those in the past. They are staying in hotels this time. One Star!! They were told to bring their own linens, the hotels don't have them.

Roko playing

Here is the latest puppy picture. We don't know which one is ours, probably the one on the bottom. His name is going to be Joe Rokocoko. Roko for short. All our dogs are named after athletes and Joe is a rugby player from New Zealand.

Beth will be picking him up on Wednesday night. Wish us luck. He better not like shoes or yarn!!

Knitting Rut

As you can tell from last few posts, I haven't been doing much knitting. A few scarves have been knit but no progress has been made on my sweaters.

With the store being busy there isn't time to knit during the day and at night I am teaching or doing paper work. Also, nothing is calling my name. Sometimes it's like a sweater yelling to me 'KNIT ME' but right now nothing is very interesting.

A lady brought me this flower today. I had never met her before but she calls for advice. She is a senior living in downtown Hamilton and can't get to the store. Her native tongue is Greek and she doesn't always understand knitting patterns-something we all have problems with from time to time. (Don't get me started on pattern writers and their inability to write easy to follow patterns!!) Dad took the flower to mom because Beth and I have absolutely no clue on how to keep a plant alive.

Beth, Bev, Lisa (Bev's daughter-in-law) and I are off to King Of Prussia, Pennsylvania on Friday for a weekend of shopping. When we booked the trip it was the only free weekend-not our choice to be there Thanksgiving Weekend. The mall will be jammed but we will definitely have fun. Luckily the Expedition is big so there will be lots of room for shoe boxes.

I won't get another post done before we go away. Have a great weekend!!

American Thanksgiving

This was sent to Beth by one of friends in the US. They are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend so she wanted to know if she should set her table the same way.

My mother taught me to read when I was four years old (her first
mistake). One day, I was in the bathroom and noticed one of the cabinet
doors was ajar. I read the box in the cabinet. I then asked my mother
why she was keeping 'napkins' in the bathroom. Didn't they belong in
the kitchen? Not wanting to burden me with unnecessary facts, she told
me that those were for "special occasions" (her second mistake).

Now fast forward a few months....It's Thanksgiving Day, and my
folks are leaving to pick up my uncle and his wife for dinner. Mom had
assignments for all of us while they were gone. Mine was to set the
table.

When they returned, my uncle came in first and immediately burst
into laughter. Next came his wife who gasped, then began giggling. Next
came my father, who roared with laughter! Then came Mom, who almost died
of embarrassment when she saw each place setting on the table with a
"special occasion" Kotex napkin at each plate, with the fork carefully
arranged on top. I had even tucked the little tail in so they didn't
hang off the edge!!

My mother asked me why I used these and, of course, my response
sent the other adults into further fits of laughter. "But, Mom, you said
they were for special occasions!!!"

Isn't it easier to just tell the truth????????? Pass this on to
your girlfriends who need a good laugh.

Ruffles scarf is done

I finished the scarf this afternoon. Everyone was going crazy for it. If I was to show you a ball of the yarn you wouldn't look twice at it but when knit and on a person it looks amazing.

When you lay the yarn open it looks like a knit piece of fabric with a right side and wrong side. This is important when knitting-you have the right side facing which makes the ruffles lie like they do.

Here is a picture of me knitting the scarf. It shows how you stab through the yarn and don't wrap the yarn around your needle.

I started another Loopa scarf on the smaller frame. This shows how you are wrapping the yarn around and catching with a thin yarn. Once you reach the top you stitch through the catching yarn and this holds the loops into place. I am using Trendsetter Checkmate. Checkmate alternates between a bright nylon checkerboard that changes into a flat matte’ Nylon ribbon. When the yarn is dyed, the flat ribbon bulks up and the open checkerboard opens out creating a subtle thick and thin against a bright and matte yarn

Korey has gotten creative with the website. In the news section he is now showing pictures with the information on new kits and yarn. He even has it linked so you can click on the news section and it will take you to the appropriate page. This will make it much easier for you to see what is new.

The new Opal sock yarn arrived this afternoon. The colours are wild. If you are looking to make some colourful socks, the new collection is for you.