Saturday, April 24, 2010

Miscellaneous Updates

Here I go - another post about anything and everything.

"Beautiful Ribber Scarves," my new scarf book and video, are finished and ready for duplication.   The scarf videos use up almost a whole disk, since I elected to show the steps for each scarf, even though that meant I'm showing the loop-through-a-loop bind-off and the circular cast-on several times.  I figured you'd pick out a scarf to do and then watch that video, and you wouldn't want to skip around.  This book will be more like the sock book with the coil binding - there are so many diagrams and illustrations, yarn requirements, and so forth, that it's quite a few pages.

Editing video is so slow and tedious that I lose patience every few days!  Editing enormous HD video files just wipes out all computer resources, and the lockups and crashes are regular.  I seem to have settled down with Adobe Premiere, although I do have one more video editor to learn and try out.  The conventional advice for video editing is to buy two super-fast computers and use them both at the same time to keep from going utterly mad with the slowness.  However, I only have my husband's computer, and I read a book or sew knits while I edit.  I'd love to hear wisdom about this, as long as it doesn't involve buying yet another computer.

Weight Watchers is paying off.  I dislike shopping, but my clothes were just too loose, so I stopped at a plus-size store this afternoon and learned that almost nothing in there is small enough for me!  I lose weight very slowly, but I feel terrific.

Exciting news, I am teaching a Machine Knitting Seminar near the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport in early November. It's a two-day seminar coordinated by the DFW guild, with a dirt-cheap price, an excellent location, but space is very limited.  The DFW knitters helped me by doing a survey of which of my techniques they'd like to see, and the resulting list is just wonderful.  Contact me by email for more information.  (Do not contact me in the comments.  I need you to email so I can email back.)

It's quiet on the May Day Contest.  Remember, you have 'till May 1 to send a great picture of something you knitted.  I'm not giving any more specific guidance - surprise me!

I have quite a list of fascinating lessons and projects to do, and can't tell you exactly which is next.  It does appear that I need to do some lace videos.

Mother's Day Shoppers:  The "EZ Entrelac" booklet and video are available for $15; "Garter Bar Course" are in stock at $25, and the "Knitting a Sock on the Standard Machine" books and videos are $25.

In Austin, there's been a heartbreaking nonprofit scandal.  Two not-for-profits lost a tremendous amount of money, apparently duped by an individual who even forged audit reports.  One organization is out of business, its employees are out of work, the families it helped have lost services, and its board of directors will face legal and financial consequences.  I volunteer with the Austin Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs, and we do free financial governance classes specifically for nonprofit board members, volunteers and employees.  Drop me an email if you want information on those classes.

5 comments:

  1. Congrats on the lost weight! New clothes wow, and if you go down a couple more sizes more new clothes and of course you get some new shoes as well right? Right? ;)

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  2. Congratulations on the weight loss and feeling so good! A little tip? Don't buy too much - you'll need more later, and what a great excuse to buy more yarn and knit a whole new wardrobe :D

    I'm working on my MayDay contest knitting and you will notice that I wrote MayDay and not May Day! I'm busy frogging at the moment!
    I'll bet there are many others feverishly working quietly at their machines too.

    I've been hoping that you would do a lace series because I can't seem to get the hand of it with punch cards at all, and the ones I have are cracking they are so old and brittle.

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  3. Congrats on the weight loss! Wish mine would actually go in the reverse, but I think it is more emotional right now with everything going on.

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  4. Sorry, I forgot to ask - When is the closing time for your contest?
    I need every hour that I can get after missing two days this week :Ø

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  5. Closing time on the contest is May 1. I'm working two charity event this weekend, but if I get a few minutes, I'll put up a post with a bunch of photos for everyone to enjoy. There are some nice projects represented in those photos.

    This was fun; I'm thinking of more contest ideas for later.

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