Okay...so I seem to have this problem with work, life, and blog balance. Work is going passably well. Everyone I work with is very nice and very helpful. I feel lost, though, and suspect that it's due to the lack of high drama. The last five years of my working life have been imbued with high drama. So now I have no road map. No one here runs up and down the halls, waving their arms, wailing that the sky is falling. When there is a crisis (a real crisis, like the production system went down and it's going to take several hours to bring it back online), people take notice, roll up their sleeves, and work to solve the problem. It's quite refreshing.
Life is also going passably well. There is a lot of knitting. I'm still not done with the Christmas knitting. But I have finished four hats, a pair of mittens, a scarf, and one sock (not a pair of socks, one sock). I still need to finish the poncho (I'm applying the I-cord now), a sock, and maybe a couple more hats (the rasta colors hat was very popular) and perhaps another scarf. I drew Tom's sister for gift exchange and gave her a gift certificate for the knitted garment of her choice, so we'll see what comes of that. One of my Christmas gifts was a copy of Folk Mittens, which is very good. I can't wait to start knitting mittens with colors and patterns. The only problem is that I can't quite figure out how to read the charts. It's going to require some studying.
And then there's this blog. My poor, neglected blog. And the poor, neglected Extreme Knitting entrants, who I have not forgotten. I think about you every day and feel guiltier and guiltier. The problem, I have figured out, is that it takes me too long to load the photos to Blogger, then incorporate them in an actual blog, instead of having one photo per blog entry. The workflow goes something like this: Upload a photo, mark the blog entry as draft, upload another photo, mark that entry as draft, write the actual blog, go back to the draft entries with the photo links, then copy and paste to the real blog entry, then publish it. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to upload more than one photo per blog entry using Picasa. Someone told me how to do it, but I was still only able to load one measly photo at a time. It's very frustrating and very time-consuming. So there you have it--the true reason I haven't published lately.
And once again, I'm going to apologize for not publishing the Extreme Knitting entries. I really haven't forgotten. And once again, I'm going to drop off the radar so I can finish the Christmas knitting. I will strive to maintain a better work, life, and blog balance after the New Year.
I wish everyone Merry Christmas (a little late), Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and very Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!
