Trickiness abounds

OK - so I finally did it and created a blog for myself. The reasons for this blog are many... I'd really like to feel like a part of this knitting community. I've been on the Spin list, the Knit list, etc as a lurker for about 6 years now. I just discovered the whole blog concept about 4 or 5 months ago (yeah, I've been living under a rock).

I really like the idea of using this as a venue for keeping track of my projects of which there are many in progress, I think my oldest WIP is either my Pyramid Jacket from IK, or my Sleeves In Your Pi that I started when I was still living in UKland (no offence to any brits who might see this - I just always thought it was funny that no one else associates uck with UK. I lived in Oxford for 5 1/2 years). I moved back home to Northern California in May of '02. In many ways I'm much happier being home, but there are definitely many things I miss. I guess I wasn't prepared for how hard it would be to feel so split in half. Not prepared when I moved over there, and again, not prepared when I came home.

Also, one of the reasons that I hesitated to start this whole blog thing is that my writing skills are crap! It's not that I can't spell, or punctuate almost properly - I've decided that I write just like I speak, and that's not such a good thing for a writer. Though it can't hurt to try, maybe I'll get better with a bit of practice.

I would also like to get a lot better at the HTML thing, I know enough about it to figure things out fairly easily - I have books at home to help, I really like design and layout, I have fun making things look pretty. It's not something that I've had a lot of experience with, mostly just because I haven't used it!

So - keeping track of my projects, thoughts, ideas, etc...
Getting better at HTML and plain prose writing...
Becoming more a part of a community of people who share my passions...
Just keeping track of my life in general I suppose, though I feel awkward writing about some more personal things in a public venue - I guess that's totally normal though.

There are a lot of areas in my life where things just haven't really gone the way that I expected them to. There are a lot of things that I'd really like to change, but have just been going with the flow becuase it's the easier way, and I don't know if I'd make it through the harder way. I don't know if that made any sense - but I know what I mean. I'm going to start thinking of this blog as a first baby step out of the the laissez-faire way of thinking that gets me nowhere.

I'm not sure what to do about pics yet. I don't feel real comfy just blogging at home, and that's where the computer where I upload all my digital pics is. I also don't use the computer where all my pics reside very often, but don't have my laptop set up to download pics onto, and even if I did, it's not something that I lug around with me - it stays home most of the time. Oh - and a list of my WIP's is in order...

1. Pi R Squared in Kidsilk Haze for my mom - 3.75mm needles.
Beautiful yarn. I like it a lot so far, but am getting really tired of it - I keep saying that if I ever decide to make the shawl again it will definitely be on bigger needles. So far I've used probably about 5 balls of KSH - when you think of a whole Kiri taking only 3 balls - well, I think you get the idea.

2. Silk Corset by Annie Modesitt (need to figure out an easy way to do the links still, and my work computer doesn't have the new WYSIWIG interface anyway!)in a rayon/cotton blend I think it's Adriafil, that I picked up a bunch of for very cheap on vacation in Malta. (Wonderful place for a holiday, go if you can).

Notes: I really think that the bust decreases as following the directions are way to high up - I also started with a teeny weeny bit of negative ease, and am afraid that it's going to be too small around, IOW I need to do some pretty serious ripping. Though it is a beautiful pattern.

3. A top down raglan of my own design that I've been calling Flair - though it's destined for the frog pond as well. I'll take pics first and see if I can figure out where I went wrong - the sleeves are just wrong and I don't like some of my increases