Valentine’s Yarn Love!

Sorry I’ve been incommunicado – it’s been hell weekend for the calendar! Last week both kids were sick one day, Hannah was sick 3 days and I was sick right along with her. Therefore not much calendar work got done. But…

TA DA!

I have finished January!*

King Midas Syndrome

I wrote a piece about this 20 years ago – but this is that odd condition that affects many of us who earn our living doing what we love. I wouldn’t change what I do for anything, but sometimes I get so caught up with the mechanics of knitting (teaching, writing a pattern, designing, working up a calendar or a book) that I can’t let myself have time to just sit and KNIT! I love it, I miss it, and my Valentine’s gift to myself will be an evening of knitting. Wooohoo!

*[Caution – non-knitting computer database geek-speak follows] Not only that, but having worked through one month I’m feeling very comfortable with the rest of the year! I have all of the patterns in a database (about 80% of them are edited) which is related to other databases which contain specific yarn information, hook size info, etc. By creating a calculation field bringing all of this information together, along with text formatting which I apply in the calcuation, I can create an exportable file. I slap this info into my Quark template, do a little futzing with each date so that the styles are correct, add the image, and voila! All of the info I need – designer, web link, manufacturer of yarn, web link for that, pattern, hook sizes & mm equivs, photo credit is right there.

The time consuming part is that all of these images – hundreds of them – are slowing me down, man! As soon as I am able I edit them, prep them for output and store them on a CD – but I need to have many, many of them on my separate hard drive at any given time, and this tends to make my Quark act wonky. I’m asking a lot of it.

So all of this non-knitting geek speak is my way of celebrating!!!