Knotty Mouse

just a test.. move along.. nothing to see..

*smashes skull on desk*

Last night I stayed up until 2am watching the VP debate and the following commentary on numerous channels, (and by “watching” I mean screaming nasty and profane things at the television while jumping up and down AND watching the live blogging over at the Ravelry “Knitters for Obama” thread) and then this morning I woke up to my computer making the most horrid noise you have ever heard in your entire life. It sounded like a cross between silverware caught in the garbage disposal and a Dremel tool on high..  and believe me when I say that its a noise you NEVER want to hear coming out of the mechanical box that houses all of your important technological stuff.

Tech Support (aka. my husband) says that my second hard drive (the one that he installed in my computer to house all of the “important” stuff that I didn’t want to lose like photos, purchased knitting pattern pdf files, shop stuff…) had burned out and burned up (literally.. there were black marks on it) sometime during the night.  Apparently the data is GONE…  he tried everything he could think of including putting the hard drive into its own external kit and plugging it in, but its just too far gone.   I haven’t had a working DVD drive for some time now and never was able to offload any of my photos anywhere… which means that 3 years worth (give or take) of photos are now GONE.  I can’t even begin to think about what else was on that drive.

If you need me… I’ll be under my bed with my teddybear.

My custom anti-spam words apparently stopped working when I upgraded WP…. I’m hoping to have them fixed shortly. Until then.. SORRY!!! I have no idea what sort of things are pre-programmed in and I can’t seem to make them change back to knitting words! *kicks blog*

Edited to add: Ok.. we’re back to my knitting words and no one should be getting “trout” as their spam word again anytime soon. hee hee.

I’m going to go back to spending the rest of my weekend searching for the floor of my office.. which I haven’t seen since sometime after we moved in. We’re not actually going to start packing until we’ve found a place to move because what we end up with (and whether it has storage on site or not..) depends on how we pack for moving.  I do have ‘donation pick up” scheduled from a local charity EVERY week until we move out and I’m just piling up the stuff in the garage.  That way it gives me a week to go down and retrieve anything that I feel I may have tossed by mistake. I’m already silently mourning a pair of boots that I feel like I shouldn’t have gotten rid of… even though I KNOW that I’ll never wear them anywhere again.

I’m just messing with the blog after upgrading WordPress..  trying to figure out the new posting features.

Honestly I wish that I had something to announce about hubby’s job but I don’t at the moment because we’re still waiting to hear back after the in person interview.  We’re still waiting on money to come in and the utilities are still waiting to be paid.  I’m finally at 90% with the first Avada Kedavra sock and even though I love the Bellatrix pattern – the drop stitches made the sock HUGE and I’m going to have to rip back to the heel and try something else or change the stitch count/needle size.  hmph.

The only good news is that its Munchkin’s “Spring Break” and we have a week to sleep late, eat ice cream, and generally lay around like a bunch of vegetables.  We have nothing planned except to do just that.. along with a few trips to the park and a lot of video game playing & movie watching.

I’m having email issues with my “mousieblog” email address and am currently unable to reply to any messages ( boo-hiss!! ) from there – hence the not replying to blog comments as of late. I’m trying to figure out if its something that I’ve broken while fiddling around with the Masala site…*looks at glass* maybe I need something stronger than fizzy grape juice??

feh.

EDITED TO ADD:  I think its fixed now..  I’m working on getting caught up on comment emails. *crosses fingers*

I thought about resurrecting this “Fake Isle” hat as a Christmas gift but I’m not entirely sure that the intended receiver will even like it.. and its Silk Garden, which isn’t something that is in my budget often (it was a destash gift) that I am willing to just toss it out to whomever and hope they don’t use it as a dust rag. At least in digging it out I was able to get an accurate progress shot for Ravelry and my new progress bars! I have been waiting for my shot at testing them (you have to be ‘approved’ for the Rav- Magic to work between your project list and your blog) and spent all of yesterday trying to install them.. until I realized that the error was really stupid (it helps to HAVE works in progress to show on said “progress bars”.. duh.) and boom.. they worked.

Here at Chez Mousie its been computer and website fun for the last two days. After my Zen-Cart shop screwed me out of shipping for the LAST TIME – I shut the whole site down for “maintenance” while I called the creators of the program nasty names and wished terrible things upon their mothers. I decided that no matter what Etsy throws at me during the coming year that its probably better than dealing with my impossible Zen-Cart shop and made the decision to trash the whole thing and start over with a general site ( I am paying for the .com for the next year already) that links to the shop blog, Etsy, has a gallery so folks can see stuff I’ve made,  and doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. Hubby is in the process now of dealing with my impossible wishes making my ‘new website’ all pretty and beating the code into submission.  I’m paying him in chocolate cupcakes and candy coated pretzels and hoping to “go live” with the new site shortly.

Oh yes, and Christmas break came early at the House of Mouse as last night Munchkin sounded like he was coming down with the plague. I sent him to bed with the promise that if he was ok in the morning he could go to school.. but he woke up sometime in the night and came in to my room to tell me he couldn’t go because he was “snuffy”.  I kept him home so that he would be well for Christmas and he spent the day in his new “army guy” pjs (christmas from my folks which came in mighty handy) laying around the house.

This whole “Blogging Without Obligation” thing has made me a total slack-ass about posting because I don’t feel pressured to come here and ramble at you for no damn good reason. Unfortunately for you I don’t actually have anything to show – but I popped in because I decorated around the blog for the holidays and thought I’d let y’all know. (aka. there’s a new banner & holiday tag line for those of you who read on Bloglines)

The weather here in Georgia has been so weird that I haven’t really been put in a knitting mood. Its cool/cold here (around 38F)   in the mornings (7am) when I take Munchkin to the bus but warms up to ‘throw a sweater over a teeshirt’ weather  (60F) by 3pm.  I did totally botch NoroVember because I wasn’t happy with the Noro I had in my stash and wasn’t about to purchase anymore with our finances being sort of ugly (tis the season and all that) again this month.

So.. I am alive and everyone is doing ok here at Chez Mousie but I’m just really not up to blogging lately.  I will be updating my Etsy shop again in the next week with new sheepie bags, beaded & fimo spinning wheel orifice hooks, handspun yarns (which you’ve seen here on the blog) and possibly some destashing of yarn & fiber.   Yes, I’m shamelessly plugging my shop this time..  as all shop funds this time of year go directly to Munchkin’s Christmas gifts.  I’ve already put up some inexpensive beaded markers for holiday gift giving….  buy handmade!

 Edited to add: ok folks, clearly Chez Mousie did not turn into a gourd at midnight.. so everything is all good.  Today my husband managed to move things around and pay for the hosting fees so that we wouldn’t lose our websites and my blog would stay up… HOORAY!

About 2-3 weeks ago I actually started to doubt whether I was going to stick around until I was at risk of losing the blog and realized that I didn’t want to quit quite yet.  I’m going to give it another year in blog land and look at switching things up with more photos and less words for a little while.

Thanks for all of your kind comments.. they’re much appreciated.

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Just a note of warning that this blog, my knottymouse.com email, and the Mousie Masala site may possibly all go “poof” and turn into a pumpkin tonight at midnight. Hopefully if I vanish I’ll be able to return within a few days.. money is more than tight around here and the web hosting fees are the least of our current monetary worries. I would let them drop entirely and go back to a free blog hosting service, but my husband has domains docked on my hosting space and it would cause all sorts of issues to move everything.

So, don’t worry- I haven’t quit blogging or anything crazy like that and I shall return. (and if you don’t like me.. then I’m sorry to inform you that I’ll be around for at least another year.. hee hee.)

This blog post is brought to you by the letter “F” for fever – munchkin has one. Also by the letter “p” for the popsicles that daddy was asked to bring back from the supermarket by said feverish munchkin. I promised to go watch some Star Wars with the little bugger, so I’ll see y’all when I return from internet hosting limbo.

As of right now everything on the blog seems to be “fixed” again. I had to update a few of the past posts because I changed my template back to the old 3 column version – but it looks like we’re back to ‘normal’ around here. I don’t look at my actual blog that often but every time I did, I remembered how much I liked my previous template with the gray scale koi background, purple skully headers, and large title bar.  Funny how one simple click of the mouse lands you in hours of editing…

I actually reverted back to this template so that I was able to put up my skull Halloween theme again this year.. its one of my favorites.  I did take a little nap for a few hours with Ms. Kitty who was happy to have company.. and now I’m back to doing a mix of computer work and housework.

Apparently the comments on my blog haven’t been getting from the site to my mailbox for more than a few days now. If you haven’t gotten a reply to a comment you’ve sent within the last two weeks that means that it got eaten by … something in between the blog and my mailbox… and I’m sorry! Honestly the only reason I realized this was because I checked an email that I don’t use relating to the .com and found about 50 “return mail demon” emails.

I have no idea what’s going on but I’m going to figure out what to hit with a hammer shortly and hope to be back up to speed soon.

-Mouse

Edited to add: ok.. its fixed. I spent the night fighting with my email and finally gave up and moved the comments to a new email that I created for the blog itself. Its not quite as convenient as using my common email with Thunderbird but I’ll live.. I’m keeping my regular email the same – so don’t update your address books for me. Whew. Technology sucks.

Click here for Disney’s Lambert Cartoon
Happy 4th of July to all of my US readers.. and happy “hump” day to everyone else. After speaking to my sis Dragon on the phone today I was reminded of a cartoon (completely G rated) that she and I loved and decided to search it out on You Tube. Enjoy!(for some reason WordPress doesn’t want me to imbed this video in my blog…)

I’m back from computer-upgrade hell.. and for the most part things are back to normal here at Chez Mousie.  Things are a little different from the way they were before.. I’ve got new programs for my mail service and some other new things to use – along with a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. I had about 3 gigs free on my other hard drive and was dreading the thought of having to start deleting photos off of my computer.

Life in general got a lot weirder in the last few days.. and Munchkin’s behavior has taken a turn for the undesirable within the last week. I’m starting to wonder if everything I’ve done for the entire span of my child’s life was absolutely the wrong choice.. and its driving me insane. His attitude has been complete crap lately (within the last month) and he got in a lot of trouble at school for it… he’s been ‘good’ all year up until this point. I’m baffled as to when my sweet little boy disappeared and this smart-assed monster appeared in his place.
I did get a little bit of knitting done while I was away.. I’ve completed the first Koigu sock and am half-way through the foot portion of the second one.  I also cast on for a pair of socks out of Wool-Ease worsted in Loden (khaki green..) for my sister in law’s Hannukah (don’t laugh..) and graduation gift. Those are going pretty fast on size 5 needles.. but I’ve stalled out because they are HORRIBLY boring.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

I am definitely having one of those days where I should have just said ‘the hell with it’ and crawled back into bed rather than staying up and facing the day. My day started at 5am when our neighbors cat woke us up by serenading us with numerous acts of the kitty opera (the long version) right outside the damn window. I should have just gotten up and stayed up but instead went back to sleep and had bizarre dreams until 735am.. when I woke up without the alarm.

Unfortunately Munchkin’s bus leaves at 750 and its a 5 minute walk.. so that left a very short amount of time to get him dressed, fed, lunch & snack made.. and get myself dressed. I was rushing to put my shoes on and fell down the front steps on my ass. I’m ok.. just a bit sore and glad that it was the INSIDE steps instead of the brick ones outside. We made it to the bus stop just in time.. but I spent the entire walk back listening to my neighbor who is having serious marital issues (as in her husband is a cheating slime-sucker who deserves to be run over by a truck a few times..) all before morning coffee. I got back to the house and went to make said coffee.. and ended up spilling the nearly full pot (all 10 cups of it) all over the kitchen and myself! I suppose that I should be thankful that the coffee was cold, but I don’t really care because it sucked AND it left me without my reserve of very strong coffee to make iced coffees with all day.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m ch-ch-changing the blog around again.. please excuse the mess. That nasty little upgrade hiccup seems to have botched my previous template.. and I’m waiting to attempt to reload the unedited version and start from the ground up again. I have a nasty combination of PMS, back pain, and a headcold..  I’m sure that the last little grains of sanity I was hanging onto are going to go right out the window on this one.

I promise that I’ll at least have something fun from You Tube for you tomorrow.. even if I don’t have any knitting to show.

For some stupid reason I was tempted by the WordPress upgrade that promised spell-check, toggle visual/html buttons, and numerous other things that would make my life sooooo much easier when it comes to writing blog posts.  I used DreamHost’s “one click install” and waited for it to do its thing. Unfortunately what it did… was completely eat my blog.

*runs away to scream*

(8:55am) Pulled this from Bloglines this morning:

Network Outtage

In other words..  We’re not going to allow you to access blogs on your birthday either Mouse, because technology as a whole hates you right now and we’re doing our part to drive you insane. This little “changes to network infrastructure” isn’t going to do a DAMN THING to help the problems you were having with claiming your blog feeds or making sure that all of your feeds actually WORK PROPERLY.. but we wanted an excuse to sit around and drink coffee & eat donuts for about 2 hours.  In short..  “Neener-Neener”. Thanks.

Testing take 2

posted at 4: 28pm

Trying to get the posts to show up in Bloglines since I’ve mucked with all of the feeds and re-routed them to feedburner.  I also fixed the problem with the site not loading up when you come straight to the page.

If anyone who is subbed here happens to be on Bloglines when this post first shows up.. can you record the time and the timezone in the comments for me? thanks. I swear I’m going to have this worked out soon.. or I won’t have any damn hair left from pulling it out in frustration.