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A Little Christmas Music

December 21, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Check out this Christmas Compilation over on Magnatune… Nice!

Magnatune Compilation: Christmas

I tried embedding it on my site but its CSS and mine aren’t playing well together and I don’t have time to mess with it. But, if you head over to that site you can hear the album in its entirety right on your PC. Then, you can buy, and YOU get to decide how much you want to pay! Magnatune is a great way for independent artists to get their music out to the public and I do try to support them as much as possible.

Not much knitting going on this weekend. But hey! The Christmas cards are done. At least a few folks will be getting them before Christmas, and that’s a good thing! All of my wrapping is done too. Now the only major thing I have to do this week is prepare our Christmas Eve dinner. I’ve decided on a roast chicken, cornbread stuffing, and green beans with red bell peppers and sesame seeds (red and green with snow!). I don’t usually care too much about plate presentation but on Christmas it’s different. It has to be yummy AND pretty. Wish me luck, I’m trying new recipes this year.

I swear, I’ve got to get back to the knitting. It’s making me crazy not to. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have a knitting post. K??

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‘Nother Test

December 19, 2008 By 1 Comment

I think I did it! I wanted to create a blog page on a white background, and thanks to some contributors to the Mandigo Wiki, the answer was right there. So, instead of having a blog that looked like a page of something on a colored background, I got rid of the “page” look and turned the background white. Then I turned the background for my posts a shade of purple (of course!), because too much white is well, too much.

Which of course then meant I needed to update my image script, because I like drop shadows, and a drop shadow image has to match the color it’s sitting on. Thusly:

sample photo of Kauni yarn

sample photo of Kauni yarn

So now, let’s see if this works correctly. Feedback welcome! Does everything look right? Let me know!

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This Is a Test

December 18, 2008 By 4 Comments

Just playing with my blog settings a bit and I need to test my photo script. Bear with me.

Kauni Yarn

Kauni Yarn

So… how does it look in your browser? Is everything staying nicely put? I have a pet peeve about people who don’t resize their images properly so they break the blog layout. I tweaked my layout a bit so that I should be able to get larger photos without breaking things. I guess we’ll see if I did… let me know if it looks weird in your browser. K?

Thanks!

Hopefully a regularly scheduled blog post will appear in this space tomorrow.

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A Visit from Saint Nicholas

December 14, 2008 By 3 Comments

No, not the poem, but this:

Santa Claus on a Fire Truck

Santa Claus on a Fire Truck

Every year, members of our local volunteer fire department take several evenings at holiday time to escort Santa around the city. Our kids get so excited when we hear the sirens! Little man was in his sock feet and Santa hat already, but I let him go outside without shoes so he wouldn’t miss the fun. (Today was the warmest we’ve had in weeks, so rest assured, his feet didn’t freeze!)

I tried to get a decent photo, but alas, my camera was not cooperating. But for a brief moment earlier this evening, our street was lit by bright lights and sirens, and candy canes were available for all.

Many thanks to those who protect us all for bringing a bit of joy to our neighborhood this season. We’re already looking forward to next year.

My DH had been out getting a few essential groceries when upon returning to the neighborhood he saw the fire department folks staging by our swim club. We gave us a call as a heads up, but we heard the sirens within seconds. Luckily, as I said, Little Man already had his hat on and I had my camera around my neck. Why, might you ask? Were we expecting Santa to visit tonight? No… we were just anxiously awaiting his arrival by channeling him:

Dear Son Can't Wait for Santa

Dear Son Can't Wait for Santa

The next 11 days are going to be a long wait.

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Filed Under: blog, family

Knitting the Ribbing!

December 12, 2008 By 1 Comment
The Hat Ribbing in Progress

The Hat Ribbing in Progress

Were it not for a slight accident this morning with the needle slipping out of the stitches and quite a few more than I would have wanted being dropped, I might be writing the Finished Object Report instead of just a run of the mill progress report. But, such is life when we’re knitting, eh? I’m not sure if I’ve ever knit a project that didn’t have at least some major mishap involved.

When I originally envisioned this hat I thought it might make a nice Christmas present for my daughter. Then I started it so early that I thought she’d get to wear it some this fall. And now? Well it looks like it’s regained it’s Christmas present status again. Oh well, at least I feel like I’m on track for something now!

Last night, we went around the kitchen table and each of us said what we liked best about the holidays. I asked the kids to ignore the obvious (presents!) and to pick their other favorite thing. Here’s what everybody said:

Diana: The Food
Steven: Making Christmas Cookies
John: Looking at All the Lights
Trish: Christmas Music

WordPress Upgrade And Other Site Stuff

Yesterday I upgraded this site to WordPress 2.7. So far, I love it! If you’re thinking of upgrading, there are a couple of things to consider. At least there are a couple of basics that I did that helped make things go smoothly. First, I made sure that the theme I’m using is 2.7-compatible (it is). I grabbed the latest version of my theme, installed the upgrade, then disabled all my plugins, and let my hosting company do the automatic upgrade. Then I went in and reactivated my plugins. That’s all there was to it!

I’m finding that it’s hard to maintain three separate blogs, so I’m going to do some more general type blogging here from time to time. I’ll still keep my family blog, but even that needs a serious update. But I’m going to add a page for my writings and stuff that I had intended to develop at my long-neglected personal blog.

This blog will still be a knitting blog, but you might notice a couple of other sections in the menu over time. I’m just finding it harder and harder to even think about keeping up with three blogs. Let me know if you have any feedback on this issue! For now, I’ve uploaded an article I wrote for my college newspaper, more than 20 years ago. Even though my life is in a completely different place now, this article captures how I’m feeling right now:

Doing Yesterday’s Work Tomorrow

Enjoy!

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