Domestic Geek

Ever since I broke my pinkie at work back on April 8th, I've really lost my knitting mojo. Any crafting, even, has been awkward and frustrating. I've had the splint off for a few weeks, but it is amazing how hard it is to get the use of something back. I've been having to go to physical therapy to try to regain the use of and feeling in my pinkie. I have a hard time believing how significant that little digit is in daily living!

Back in April, I signed up on Ravelry to do a Mystery Bag KAL (knit-a-long) with podcaster/designer She-Knits. I ordered one of her purple kits because I knew with my upcoming vacation, I'd never get around to picking out and purchasing my own yarn. It arrived and I was psyched to knit. The kit included 8 skeins of Universal Yarn Deluxe Chunky, a magnetic clasp and even some She-Knits M&Ms (I'll eat them when the bag is done). The first clue was issued on June 19, one day prior to leaving for vacation. Perfect! I packed the needles, made sure I had a copy of the pattern downloaded to my laptop, all ready to knit on the trip...except that I left the yarn at home. D'oh! Oh, well. Turns out I wasn't in a knitting mood anyway. I had a couple of other projects with me. I think I knitted one whole row the entire trip.

I began in earnest on July 1st. It took me a few days since I had to go back to work, and I even counted rows on my iPhone app, Stitchminder. I finished up clue #1 on July 4th:


Now I'm happily knitting away on Clue #2. I was hoping to get caught up before this week's clue is released, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get that far. I'm shooting for being with the rest of Mystery KAL knitters to knit the final clue released next week. We shall see. At least I'm finally knitting again.

I keep looking at my current design trying to figure out why I can't make myself fix the few issues I have left and it has just struck me that it is the two sidesbars that bug me.

I first starting working on this design back when I did paid blogging and was still active in a bunch of the blog directories. I put in two sidebars because all that extra side content made my previous single sidebar way too long.

Well, I've since decided I don't need all that extra crap (in my life or on my blog), but I kept the two sidebars because it took me so danged long to figured out the spacing and stuff. When I get home, I need to dump them and figure out a new layout. I still love my header, I'm just not happy with the rest.

Maybe once I am happy with a design, I will blog on a regular basis again.

Trying to get this to work.



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I've been trying not to write about work stuff on here anymore. Mostly because it's boring, crappy news. SSDD. I need to write about this, though, because it is really bugging me.

With the "economic downturn," first we started having to pay part of our health care and then they stopped contributing to our retirement plans. Next came the mandatory week furloughs. Normally, I would understand why we have to take a week off each quarter (using vacation if you've got it, unpaid if you don't), but the management has been calling in other people to work OT to get the work done while we're still being required to take mandatory time off. How is this saving the company any money? Not to mention that it's causing morale issues amongst those that are not offered overtime. It's lame. Couple that with a cryptic note in our paychecks today that doesn't really say whether we get the 4th of July off or not, and attitudes amongst my coworkers is dropping further in the toilet.

It's looking like once Marcus and I get back from vacation, I'm going to have to find a secondary source of income. I won't have any vacation hours left and I can barely pay my bills with my bare minimum paycheck. Now that I've gone back to my old position, my opportunities to sneak in an extra hour or two of overtime a week are gone.

I know I should be grateful I have a job. There are a lot of people out there who don't have one. Still, the nonsense occurring daily is driving me insane. I get grumpy when I can't afford yarn or Tokyo Joe's.

On a related note, I'd never be this hard up for a job. Apparently, if you want to work for the city of Bozeman, MT, you have to give up user names and passwords. According to an article on cnet:

The Rocky Mountain city instructs all job applicants to divulge their user names and passwords for "any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

Uh, invasion of privacy anyone? Shame on them for asking and shame on those who willingly give up such information. No freaking way am I giving those up for the possibility of getting a job.I agree that they have the right to base employment decisions on what an applicant may have posted online, but demanding access to logins? Disgraceful. I really am starting to wonder what country I live in anymore.

I saw this great article about how teens in Britain have taken up the craft of Cross-Stitch. The revival, dubbed "Urban Cross-Stitch," consists of creating designs based on video games or street designs, rather than the more sampler or picturesque designs normally associated with the craft. Very cool!