I often find that the time right after I finish a significant project is just as delicious as that moment when I try something on and discover that it is exactly what I wanted it to be. Suddenly my whole world opens up again as I release whatever I have been focused on. Now I can consider all the other things that have been tugging on the edges of my creative brain at the same time as I decide what I am going to fill my recently vacated project basket with.
Swatching for CeCe
It's probably not surprising that the first thing I did last night was order my copy of the Bonne Marie's CeCe pattern. I know, I know, my Dad's Kaleidoscope Vest is waiting patiently in another basket expecting me to keep my promises, but a wool vest is for fall and winter a lacy cardigan is a spring and summer project. CeCe takes only 600 yards of yarn in my size. I'm sure that it will be possible for me to complete CeCe and still have time to make sure that Dad has a new vest in his fall wardrobe.
At least I am being "good" on one account. The yarn that I am going to make CeCe in is some Butterfly Super 10 that I bought to make the Polka Purl Dots wrap top from Interweave Knits. Clearly I enjoy myself a nice wrap top, but when I thought about what I would get more wear out of, CeCe won hands down. The deal was sealed when I got gauge on my first attempt.
So with the new sweater project selected and swatched, I moved on to the next thing I wanted to work on: adding some bells and whistles to the blog. If you're using MT3.2 there are some very neat plug ins that you can install to enhance your experience:
- The EnhancedEntryEditing plugin (part of the Ajaxify set of plugins) gives you a WYSIWIG editor to create posts in. How nice not to have to wrap all my images in HTML tags. Now I can just type and format as if I was using a word processor.
- BigTemplateWindow gives you enhanced editing capabilities for your MT templates and CSS files -- and includes a dictionary of MT tags that are available to you.
- ConfigUI gives you a GUI editing screen for MT's config file. No more fussing around with my webhost's weird file managing tools and FTP to make changes when I need to.
- Gravatar, a plugin that allows "Globally Recognized Avatars" to show up in comments. I combined this with some new styling for my comment popup so that my comments are highlighted and an avatar of my choice shows up along with my comment. The nice thing about this is that the avatars will show up for anyone who has one, not just me. All you have to do is go to the Gravatar website, register with an email address, and upload a small picture. After they "rate" (yes, like the MPAA rates movies sort of rating) your photo whenever you make a comment here and you use the same email address you used to set up your Gravatar account your avatar will show up in my comments section. Neat, eh? At least I hope it will be. I've made a comment to this post so you can see what it looks like and see my new comment styling, which I set up with help from the Learning Movable Type blog (yes, my style looks suspiciously like theirs right now, but that will change when I get more time to play with my blog templates).
After playing with my blog, I still had time to finish up my pattern for the dragon scale socks. Some final proof reading is required, but a real pattern will be ready soon.
And now I'm off to dig through my old treasure trove of counted-cross stitch gear. Inspired by Julie's talk about monocolor French cross-stitch samplers, I've been feeling like it might be time to pick up my tapestry needles again!
P.S. Thank you to everyone who said such nice things about Liberty. If a sweater could come out and take an encore bow, she would. And sorry about the link to Clyde... it used to be Liberty. But Clyde is clearly not Liberty.
Just a comment to show off the "Gravatar" and the CSS styling.
very nice. but bloglines brings one to the actual post, not the main page. comments are on the page below the post and no avatars.
I am making CeCe also, in silky wool. have gotten almost through the second pattern repeat. So far I am really liking it.
I love your avatar! Now I feel like uploading one.
Bloglines will take you to where you want to go depending on which link you click; if you click on the blog title in Bloglines it will bring you to the main page. If you click on the entry title, it will bring you to the entry page. I always click on the blog title so I get to the main page in case sidebar things have been changed, but that's my own preference.
Becky is right -- you can come to the main blog page by clicking on the title of the blog. That's what I usually do, as well. However, I had completely forgotten that I needed to update the daily archive template for my posts. Once I do that the comment styling and Gravatars will show up there too.
Thanks for the reminder, Dorothy!
liberty is lovely and i really like the color in that swatch. so many summer knits are pastels, dark colors are refreshing
Wise decision on the spring/summer top, like you said the vest can't be worn until Fall anyway. There's absolutely plenty of time.
Wow...CeCE is going to look great in that color!
I probably should have mentioned that the color in the photo of the swatch is pretty true. When I have it in my hands, however, it has a little more magenta-like quality than a true purple, which is my favorite kind of purple color.
I always lurk around, just watching your knitting progress, but thanks for the MT update :) I use wordpress, but it's nice to see what other platforms are doing to keep themselves fresh (helps if you ever have to change) :)
I like your pretty basket.
That's a great color, very rich!