When The Sun Don't Shine...

I've started the long "learning to purl" slog again -- hence there is nothing to show this evening because I didn't want to take a picture of the results. I've almost got it, but I do something on my knit stitch that makes it even and loose, and I'm not doing whatever that is when I purl which makes it really... really... tight and the next row is just painful to get through. So yeah. I'll get there. Maybe.

In the meantime, I got my birthday present. The cats are currently shredding the big block of styrofoam it came packaged in, which is fun for them but going to be a nightmare to clean up. But isn't this thing awesome? It's solar powered, so the light is on at night.

All I can say is that there are worse addictions than garden gnomes. So there.

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The Great Communicator

At work we recently switched over to using the Google suite of tools -- gmail, Google Docs (very similar to MS Word), Google Sheets (a really poor imitation of MS Excel), some presentation software, and a few other things that I haven't been forced to use yet. Initially the rumor was that it was going to save a bunch of money. Then it came out that it didn't save any money, but was going to increase collaboration.

I can kind of see why they wanted to do this. I mean, for years the way most things worked was someone created a spreadsheet with a bunch of information and mailed it out. Different people would make modifications and email that changed version around with a slightly different name. Other people might start making modifications on the original version and send that around, so no one version of the file had all the changes, and pretty soon nobody had any idea what was going on but it probably didn't matter because there was some other problem that was more important now anyhow because the company had reorganized and centralized or decentralized depending on the month. Then a new spreadsheet would be created for the new problem and start the rounds.

File Naming Conventions

So using a file that everyone could access and make modifications to would seem to solve this issue. (The file updating issue, not the reorganize/centralize/decentralize/hike! thing.) Of course, we lost some functionality along the way... little minor things like the ability to search for numbers in email (really! you can't do this in gmail!) which is completely unimportant unless your entire designation system is based on six digit numbers and you need to see if there have been problems with this particular place in the past. But hey, why would we need to be able to do that?

Anyhow, because my group has been busy working instead of embracing collaborative tools by taking dozens of hours of training, we haven't really become experts on this whole thing yet. But I tried today! I had two data sources with conflicting information, so I created a spreadsheet with the conflicts and put it on Google Drive and sent email to everyone asking them to highlight which column had the correct value.

It seemed like a simple thing.

First off, it turns out that I should have sat through more of the training or something, because even though I sent everyone a "sharable" and "editable" link, nobody could edit the file. So then I sent another email telling everyone to just send me the changes that I needed to make.

Of eight people, three didn't respond. That's not too bad since some might be on vacation or working nights. One person highlighted the correct information. Three people highlighted both columns (with conflicting information). One person just changed some values but didn't indicate what he had changed. All of these people (myself included!) are functional adults with college degrees.

Yeah. It was one of those days.

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How To Be Bad At Baking

I woke up a few minutes before my alarm this morning, so I was browsing Facebook and there was an ad from King Arthur Flour for springerle molds. (They also had a recipe for anise drops, another cookie I've never seen referenced elsewhere.)

If you don't know what a springerle is, it's a German anise cookie that has a picture embossed on it. I've never seen the molds advertised anywhere before, but apparently Facebook and King Arthur Flour know me well.

I'm not really good at following directions (yes, this is an understatement) which makes me a pretty terrible baker. Baking requires precision. What I do is more... hand wavey. Sure, that's a good amount of flour. Yeah, I like vanilla, so I'll dump in a bit extra. Well, the yeast might be a little bit old, so I'll just bump up the amount. This is not the way to get consistent results when baking.

(I've also had the occasional complete disaster, like the time I made my first cake from scratch and missed the line for flour, but in my defense I was young at the time.)

I made springerles just once, many years ago. After a huge amount of effort I ended up with thin wafers that you could break a tooth on. That's why my mom has the springerle board now. She can follow directions. She also claims that the weather makes a big difference on how they turn out, but I can't remember if it's supposed to be humid or dry for the best results. Either way, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't end up with the same thing no matter what the weather.

Maybe when (if) I remodel my kitchen I'll make an area suitable for rolling out dough and I'll force myself to follow directions and get better at baking...

 This was the last thing I baked. It tasted fine but looked nothing like it was supposed to.

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Sick Day

Woke up this morning feeling like crap with a bunch of weird dreams that suggested I had a fever, so I stayed home and went back to bed. (It also made me re-evaluate why I wimped out on yesterday's run at the two mile mark -- I thought at the time it was because it was hotter than I'd expected, but now I think maybe I was starting to feel bad because of whatever this is.)

After another ten hours of sleep I felt better, so I spent the afternoon reading the archives on Query Shark, which is a blog where writers send book queries to be critiqued. At some point in the upcoming year I'm going to start sending queries for my first novel to agents. A lot of people recommend getting 100 rejections before retiring the novel and moving on to the next one. Still, there's no point if having the query be the reason for the rejection -- if they hate my novel, that's one thing, but if I can't even get them to look at it, that's a completely different problem.

Anyhow, mostly what I've learned is:

• use present tense
• make it clear who the main character is right in the first sentence
• make the main character's problem clear right away

That seems pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how many people can't get even that bit straight. And these are people who are looking for help on their queries -- I can't imagine how many queries go to agents where the author doesn't realize what's important.
 

I also listened to a couple of podcasts and knitted yet another Yeti hat. This time I went with a boxy hat instead of a round one. Maybe someday soon I'll even look up how to purl...

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Best Ever!

Remember how I said I was going to get a bunch of necessary things done this weekend? Clearly I meant next weekend, because today I made this:

And this:

I have to say, I'm kind of impressed with how they turned out since I was just making it up as I went along. I'm fairly certain that's not how you're supposed to use two colors together, but I'm lazy and tying a bunch of knots held no appeal

Also, the big dog tried to walk off with an entire ball of yarn. I'm not sure what that was about. He won't even play with dog toys.

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Don't Ask

I went to the craft store today to get a couple of things, including yarn for the project discussed yesterday. I got a lot of yarn, in all kinds of colors. But it's not like it's going to go bad, right?

It wasn't until I headed for the checkout desk that I considered how friendly people in craft stores are. Inevitably I'll buy a bunch of random stuff and when they're ringing it up they'll ask what I'm making. This time I was sort of hoping we wouldn't have that conversation because "knitting hats for my Yeti lawn ornament" makes me sound kind of weird. The good news is that this store is on the other end of town from my house, so I hardly ever run into anyone I know there.  But the really good news was that it was eight at night and the cashiers were too tired to care, so I didn't have to say anything.

Anyhow, I came home and tried to remember how to cast on. It's been a while. I did finally figure it out, and then I cast on a bunch of stitches and started knitting.

When I say "started knitting" I mean just that. If I need to purl I'm going to have to go watch a video or something because I can't remember how and even when I knew how it was a pain. So I'm just knitting. Since I'm completely winging it, this works out just fine. I figure I'm good for a while although eventually I'm going to have to figure out how to decrease. Also, after going a few rows it turns out I might be making a poncho instead of a hat because I fear that I got a little too excited about casting on. Whatever. I'll figure it out.

Guido finds my knitting an excellent meditation aid. He watched me the entire time. I don't think he wants the yarn as much as he really, really wants the knitting needles. They are now safely locked in a drawer that (I think) he can't open.

So yeah... I spent the evening knitting a hat for my lawn ornament. How about you?

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Distractions

It's holiday season again, and if you're me that means the following:

• avoiding all stores because they will be playing horrible Christmas music
• cleaning the house before the pet sitter arrives (and yes, this is a month-long project)
• watching horrible holiday movies

Holiday movies are a really weird thing. They're all just awful, but awful in a way that must have required some real effort to get balanced. The writing is bad, the acting is bad, the directing is bad, the cinematography...yeah, it's not like I have any idea what that is but I'm sure it's bad -- everything, just everything, is bad. If any one piece were competently done, they wouldn't be as fun to watch.

This year, though, I'm not watching any holiday movies because I cancelled my Netflix subscription last month. It's been a rough year in general, and it seemed like every new show was just one more F*@&$% white man whining about how rough he had it or saving all the helpless women-folk or just generally being the savior because he was the only one qualified merely by being 1) white and 2) male.

(I mentioned it's been a rough year, right? I'm aware there may be some selection bias in my overall view of the television and film industry. But still.)

In any case, I cancelled my Netflix subscription so now I have a chunk of time to do something useful.

Or at least now I have a chunk of time...

Jennifer pointed out that my Yeti with gnomes could really use a bunch of little hats, and I feel like my knitting skills might be up to something like that. Granted, it definitely won't be a hat that a person would be willing to wear, but lawn ornaments can just take their damn chances.

I think I'll have to go get some festive yarn tomorrow.

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