And now for something completely different

So over the last few weeks, I've been noticing a particular hashtag floating through my Twitter feed - #yarnpadc. This is a photo-a-day-challenge started by princess deia, and has resulted in some really cool yarny photos. So when Ruth tweeted a link to the list of prompts for October, I thought - why not? I don't usually go in for things like this, but I'm looking forward to taking the opportunity to look around a bit more and use the prompts for inspiration.

Tomorrow's prompt is "on the needles" - shouldn't be too hard to cover that one! I'll be posting the photos on my Twitter feed, and do a roundup every week here. If you get inspired, come join us!

The power of the tweet

You, dear reader, may or may not be aware that I've got a sitemeter for this page. Every week I get an email report of how many visits I've gotten. I put it on initially just to see how many people were showing up, but it turns out that I can see where my visitors are geographically, where they arrive from (if they come from another page for example), when during the day they visited. It's all very interesting, but I honestly don't pay too much attention to it other then to check and see how many visits I've gotten in the last week.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I opened up my report a couple of weeks ago to find this:

And then today, opening up another report to see this:

Apparently, there are little web gremlins running around searching for particular keywords (in this case I suspect The Shard and Putney), and alerting their handlers, resulting in a tweet about some random knitting pattern, and lo and behold - I hit the sitemeter jackpot.

It's all a little Case-Molly the Razorgrrl-Neuromancer, but given that my previous readership is about 50 hits a week, many of which are members of my immediate family, I'm thrilled to bits that more people are visiting. So, to all of you folks who have wandered over to this corner of the knitting blogosphere - welcome! I'm awfully glad to have you here. The red wine and chocolate is over there on the coffee table, let Mario the Barista know if you'd like a cappuccino, and pull out your implements of fibery goodness. I'll try to keep the kid stories to a minimum...

Some knitting to tide you over...first up is Sleeve Island.

And Scarf Island.

Sadly, with no hope of imminent rescue in sight.

Temptation

Someone (actually, probably more then one someone), somewhere (on the Internet) once said that sock yarn doesn't count as stash.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it, after yesterday's oops!

Regia Jacquard and Spindlefrog 75% SW merino/25% nylon

In my defense, the Regia was 99 p a ball at Oxfam, so that wasn't too bad, and I couldn't resist the Spindlefrog, yarn/fiber of the month at the oh so aptly named Stash Yarns. In fact, if I hadn't blown a wad in Amy's shop, I might have grabbed some BFL as well.

I think I will be hiding these for a while. Yarn? What yarn? Although Devil, who was with me, will probably blow it for me...

I can die happy now

Crewbies on dooce.com

I want those four hours of my life back

If you're considering faking your death on the internet, please us this video as a primer so I can get some more sleep.

I will also add a postscript: going back to the community where you "died" as a sockpuppet but using identifiable aliases/similar email to register your new blog will probably not work out too well for you. Just sayin'...

What, knitting? OK, if you insist. Boo decided (after Devil wore her new socks for 36 hrs straight before I could pry them off her feet and throw them into the machine) that she needed new socks too. So she started pulling yarn out of the cupboard and holding it on her feet. And standing on it. I broke down and started a pair for her out of some Kool-Aid dyed Knitpicks Bare, red and pink, using Grumperina's model for helical stripe socks. They will not be done for the January progress report, but I have a whack-load of spinning to share for that.

Wee teaser: My WHMU(WHSKAL) buddies might want to take note of the spinning posts for the next few months. That is all.

I got something

But it's not knitting...

Speedy police-evading sheep (courtesy of the Yahoo Spin List).

My question is this: what was that animal on anyway? Cause my tri run leg could use some help. And is the owner ever going to be brave enough to claim it?

Eleven long haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus

When I got married, Ironman and I were living in a wee pink stucco house in Tucson, and we decided to drive back east for the wedding. Which meant a lot of time driving through some pretty open countryside, with only occasional truck stops along the way. In a 1997 Ford pickup with a tape deck. In addition to developing a sixth sense for when the next Flying J was going to appear on the horizon, we amassed a somewhat disturbingly large collection of driving music. Not just music to drive to, but driving music. Songs about truckers and the open road and billboards and so on*. So we have a bit of a soft spot for the trucking industry as a whole.

Which is why this is so hysterically awesome. Go, and vote for the entry made up almost entirely of country song cliches - just brilliant.

* The sheer number of versions of this song that came up with a one word search is one of the reasons I love YouTube. This is why Devil loves YouTube.

Gourdess bless the folks in retail

I'm sure everyone and their mother has already visited this site, but it is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

I am thanking my lucky stars that I managed to get through high school and college (and grad school for that matter) without having to spend more then a summer asking the nutters "Can I help you with anything sir?"