Hey, I'm Still Around - All Kinds of Updates

I've had a crazy few days, but I am knitting.  I am doing a lace shawl, my mirror image lace triangle shawl, making up a fresh sample if I can for the Denver seminar.  Their wish list was heavy on the lace items I do, and I adore lace.

On the lace front, I am hoping to purchase a Studio for the primary purpose of Studio-ifying my lace, particularly the Enchanted Edgings.  I really don't see why it can't be done, but I do expect it to require a lot of switching and threading and unthreading.  I'll let y'all know!

Work has been NUTS this week.  Somebody remind me how much I love my job, please?  Well, I take care of the network and the accounting, and fortunately, we finished the audit field work period before our network decided to get all difficult on me.  We had an assortment of problems connecting to our home office the last couple weeks, I think because of big-time maintenance at our home office, and I've spent hours trying to see if there's anything we're could do locally to make it better.

In an unrelated fiasco yesterday, we actually went down and stayed down three hours.  Yesterday morning after our old server, which runs Small Business Server 2003, had to be rebooted, it lost most of its licenses.  We have too many people to limp along with the licenses it had left - 5- we normally have 45 licenses.  It comes with 5, and you pay lots of money for more.  This has happened before, and the routine is to type the Microsoft license keys back in, and life is good.  Not this time!  In fact, I spent almost 2-1/2 hours on the phone with Microsoft being transferred around by people who barely spoke English and couldn't understand what my problem was well enough to send me to a remotely likely department.  They also kept telling me that our licenses wouldn't validate.  It's been years since I phoned Microsoft, and I hope it's years before I phone them again.

I finally got a support case started - and they charge for that - then went to my office to eat a sandwich and Google the problem and see if anyone out on the Net has a fix.  Found a fix, did the fix, Microsoft called back, and I told them we were already up and running.  I was very happy with myself!  It turns out that the software saves a backup file of the original licenses that can be copied over the messed-up file.

I always feel great once a problem is fixed, but that doesn't make up for the hours of feeling terrible because my co-workers are frustrated and can't get their work done.

Now we're working on getting a newer server and newer software as well.  Our server is several years old and it's time.  I guess this old dog will have to learn some new tricks, or at least new software.

On the knitting front, lots of things are happening!  I've already sold a bunch of Goldilocks books.  I put it up on the blog at a special price to encourage people to buy it early.  I am proud of this booklet - I think I pushed the envelope as to quality projects that can be made on simple bulky machines, and I think I gave enough information to empower beginners.

I have the Colorado handouts written, just have a little more editing to do and they go to print.  Hubby did the last proofread and he finds a lot wrong - just try getting a missing period past him!  He really thinks about any numbers in the patterns, too, asking questions like, "Do you really mean needle #94L?  Does that mean left?  Doesn't the pattern just say "right" in the paragraph above?"

I've nearly finished a hand knitting book (very pretty round dishcloths), and it probably calls for some video to cover the provisional cast-on I prefer and the invisible seam weaving, which is just good old Kitchener, but in garter stitch.  I love knitting those things.  Probably something wrong with my mind...but if you read this blog, you already know that I like knitting things in circles.  I find hand knitting super soothing, but I don't like to hand knit on double-point needles.  These are two-needle dishcloths with an invisible seam.  I don't quite know when I'll finish that project, though; probably after Colorado, which is at the end of the month.

I've written some more essays on how to improve your knitting.  This batch is about the thicknesses of yarn - "yarn weights" - and I need to read them and see if they're any good.  If they're okay, I'll stick 'em on the blog soon.

Knit Natters is this Saturday, so if you're in the Central Texas area or visiting the area, you might like to come.  I can be emailed at diana_knits "at" sbcglobal "dot" net.  I don't know what's on the program yet, but I think Barbara has programs in reserve.  We have a Yahoo group now.  You can search for it and ask to join if you're interested in what our club is doing.

Knit Natters is planning a fall seminar.  I don't have a lot of details yet, but I hope to have more for you soon.