WIPs

I go to a weekly knitting group called Knit Wits hosted by my friend Marsha, the Head Knit Wit. We are just getting back into the swing of things right in time for the big knitting season and this year she's challenged us to finish a project a month. The idea is to drag out all your unfinished knitting that is stuffed in a basket just waiting to be finished and finish them while you also do your normal knitting. Can we do it? Can we finish stuff?

Hello, have you met me?

I am the master of the unfinished project. Tha Masta. I love to start projects but I consistently do not complete them. So here's four projects I pulled out of my knitting bag, I didn't even look in the basket stuffed in the corner of my studio. This is all from my knitting tote.

Four projects. Right there is a project a month through the end of the year, we'll get to the basket in January.

Option 1. An open cardigan for me. I started this project when I had my yarn store and I've always loved the sweater and would love even more to wear it one day. It's made with a Jo Sharp Alpaca Kid Lustre which is a combo of alpaca, kid mohair and merino wool. I've already completed the back, one side and one arm, this is the second arm on the needles.

Option 2. A baby sweater sample knit for my Baby Boo Cardigan pattern. It's knit in Plymouth Baby Boutique, a super soft yarn that is a pleasure to knit. All that needs to be done is knit the sleeve cuffs and add buttons, I've already sewn in the yarn ends!

Option 3. Another baby sweater. It's in Coffee Beenz by Plymouth Yarn and I'm really hoping it will only require one skein because that's all I have. This is for my new nephew but it's 12m size so I have a little time since he was just born in July.

Option 4. A pair of socks for me or someone with big feet. These are knit in a corn fiber yarn called Maizy. It's a nice yarn and an interesting pattern but the Monkey pattern does not work up fast for me.

What do you think? Which work in progress (WIP) should I conquer? Option 2 will be fast, #1 I really want to wear, #3 will be adorable, and #4 would make a nice Christmas gift. Help!

Low water, high color

Here's another desert plant that lives in my garden. Its common name is lions tail and you can certainly see why. Thomas' granny gave me this orange wonder during her visit last year and I love it.

Cactus flowers

Growing up on the east coast there were always bright, showy flowers to please my eyes. But when I moved to California I had a yard that was nothing more than dirt. I've spent the last four years learning about what kind of wonders can grow in the desert that is Southern California. I certainly never knew the desert could grow such wonders without much water. This succulent called Kalanchoe pumila has soft lavender and eggplant colored leaves to present these tiny pink gems.

How was your weekend?

We had a little knock coming from the trunk of the car that was making me crazy, crazier. So we disassembled the trunk interior and...

We had to figure out exactly where the rattling was coming from, right? But it was a success. We tightened up a few bolts and the car feels great again, like new. Hooray! And I might have taken a turn or two a little quicker than I should have. All in all a win win.

And, we fixed the TV!

It died about two weeks ago and we thought it was a cooling fan that died. We got ordered a new fan, installed it, and it didn't work. We dug a bit deeper into the TV's guts and found a charred area on a circuit board. Thomas found the part, we clipped off the burned one and soldered on the new one and poof! A revitalized TV!

After two successes we decided to try for a third. The car's CD changer had jammed and was holding a half dozen discs hostage for the last year. We had to rip out what seemed like the entire front half of the car to get to the radio but eventually we made it. Then we had to remove 45,000 screws to get to the center of the Tootsie-Pop.

We freed our CDs, we didn't end up with a working changer but we did have fun. I hope your weekend was full of fun, too!

GFLOPS vs. TFLOPS

I know, I lost you already.

I do a lot of work for a computer hardware company and sometimes I have no idea what anyone is talking about. But I feel like I should kind of pretend like maybe I might understand a small iota of a sentence while I'm there. So while in a circle of middle-aged male engineers I smile, nod, and take lots and lots of notes. Then I rush back to my desk and read over my scribbles trying to decipher half of what I wrote down.

I was recently art directing some new collateral materials and I had to compare one company's processing speed to another company's processing speed. Of course nobody wants to compare apples to apples so I had the task of formulating a chart. A chart about flops, or rather FLOPS because it's an acronym, you know. Oh, you don't know? FLOPS or FLoating point Operations Per Second is how many times a little processor chip is computing data. I learned that yesterday. I imagine it like a fish out of water flailing about on a boat deck but it might be a bit more structured than that.

Anyway, I'm happily making my chart when I realize one company is talking about their product in gigaFLOPS and the other is in teraFLOPS. What's a girl to do? I'm certainly not going to go back over to the gaggle of guys and let on that I didn't comprehend a single word they said. So I find my own engineer.

The engineer at home who knows more about computer hardware, computer software, computer programming, computer anything than anyone else, ever. He gives me a bit more information than necessary, which I love by the way. Because I do firmly believe that a designer should learn as much about their client's products as possible to give them the ability to do the best work possible. But the extra information he delivered wasn't correct and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity for a little jab.

But then I got leveled. I can feel the sarcasm dripping out of that last bubble. It should read more like "riiiiiiiiiiiight."