And since we all need a Harry Potter fix, I present "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" by Neil Cicierega

I've gone back to working on my book at the moment (I have to reknit two hats because I wasn't happy with the prototypes), so Miss Brittany's jumper is languishing a bit.

Here's a photo of what I've done so far:

This is the front, from the top of the ribbing to the underarms. The skull designs is knit using the amazing chart made by DomiKNITrix and you can find out about it here.

I have one and a bit hats, some wiring and 20" of i-cord to go and I'll be back working on the jumper and mittens and my suffolk puff coverlet. All of which need to be finished now so I'll be knitting fast!

:-)

The contact form still isn't working but everything else is now functioning properly!

I have also installed recaptcha in my blog and have turned off comment moderating. This means we can finally have proper discussions in the comments of posts without the threat of spamming or everyone having to wait for me to allow comments through.

The server move is nearly complete. I successfully reinstalled the photo gallery, only to realise that most of the photos were missing so I'm uploading them now and will need to reinitialise the software to get them to show up. My comments form is also not working so if you need to contact me you can email me at sarah at knitting-and dot com in the meantime.

I have lots of new and exciting things to add to the website once everything is working again, more than enough for at least a year or two!

I will be adding a whole section on using these (including the contents of this booklet):

These are vintage Singercraft tools which are used to make all sorts of things. You can use them to make shag pile rugs, toys, patterned tufted fabrics, fancy trimmings for sewing, afghans, monograms among other things. I have loads of public domain instructions that I'm going to put online, plus I'm going to have a play with using them and see what projects I can come up with.

Carol from the Butterfly Loom has issued me with a challenge to see how many different techniques I can come up with for using her butterfly looms.

We had a great conversation about the looms and she gave me lots of ideas to play with. I plan to wind, weave, felt and fringe my way into oblivion with those. And I'll share all the instructions with you :-)

I succumbed to temptation (and the fact that I really love my Clover suffolk puff yo-yo makers) and purchased these from ebay to complete my Clover yo-yo maker collection. The flower and heart come in two sizes, big and small. I bought both.

So expect some sewing projects using those :-)

Come to think of it, I've almost finished making the 1,600 suffolk puffs for the coverlet I'm making so I could document how I sew it together and make that a sewing project for the website.

I will also be adding a section to the website about Teneriffe lace and the Polka Spider Web tools. I have several booklets from 1939 that I want to make available for download, plus a huge collection of different shaped pin templates that I have drawn up.

Here's a photo of the cover of one of the vintage booklets for a teaser:

This booklet has instructions and templates for 6 square designs and 6 round designs. I'm not sure whether they were originally all in one booklet but the full set of instructions is there for all 12 designs.

I will also be investigating texture and multicolour weaves on the weavette looms, inspired by this photo by abmatic that I found on flickr.

Add those to all the things I was already doing (knitting wiki, home work book, vintage embroidery patterns, original and vintage sewing patterns etc) and I think that will be enough new stuff for a couple of years at least!

The faqs, wiki and blogs are now working correctly.

I'm now going to (fingers crossed) reconfigure the gallery and will hopefully have it functioning within the next few hours.

I REALLY hope I'm not asked to upgrade servers again within the next millennium or so :-P

Right after I write this I'm going to set the knitting-and.com domain name to point to the new server.

This means that, after it switches over, the wiki, photo albums and faqs won't work until I reconfigure the software that runs them. So don't panic if something looks broken. If the fates are willing it shouldn't stay that way for long!

Techy Website Stuff

The move to the new server is going well, despite my broadband being speed limited at the moment because we used up our monthly bandwidth limit 2 weeks ago. Good news is that it should reset and speed up tomorrow.

I do have to install image magick and netpbm myself using shell access. I've never done this sort of thing before but (fingers crossed) I can get it up and going. At the moment I'm uploading the website files to the new server. It takes a while to upload a gig on a speed limited connection (a couple of days).

Suffolk Puffing

1,404 suffolk puff yo-yos made. 196 puffs and a whole lot of sewing together to go (by August 19th). I'm cautiously confident about getting it finished in time. I'm also saving some fabric to make myself a couple of cushion covers, although I won't be using them until we buy our own house.

KnitWiki

The spam protection methods I installed seem to be working well. We haven't had any spam users sign up since I installed recaptcha. Once the server move is finished I'm going to install it in my blog as well so that commenters won't have to wait for me to approve comments. Hopefully this will encourage readers to have some sort of discussion in the comments.

Bink's Skully Jumper

Haven't gotten any further since the last post because suffolk puffs and website moves are taking up all my time. Must work on it some more so she can wear it before Spring

:-P

Hat Book Rewrite

The rewrite of my hat book remains unfinished due to many reasons. As soon as the website and the yo-yo quilt are done I'm going to work on nothing else until it's finished and sent to the illustrator that I have in mind so they can see if they want to work on it.

I do apologise to everyone who's been emailing me after a copy. After deciding to rewrite the book we have had a death in the family, sold our home, moved 900km, been homeless for 8 months (our family of three lived in a single room at my Dad's house and were really grateful to have somewhere to stay at all), had our possessions in storage for about a year, lost two dear pets to cancer and are only just getting sorted out and back on track. I am terrible at multi-tasking so I have to make it the next priority.

If I don't have it released in time for Christmas you all have permission to send me hate mail.

Actually, I'm going to go and work on it now while my ftp program uploads files.

I'm just backing up the photo gallery, wiki and blog in order to backup the installations for the move to the new server.

This means they may go offline for a while in order to ensure that what I am backing up will reinstall properly on the new server.

The rest of the site will still be working.

Thanks for your patience.

They may constantly overestimate my technical knowledge when it comes to servers and stuff, but they do help out awfully quickly. I received a message this morning that PHP 5 has been installed.

Now I have to ask them if image magick and/or netpbm is installed. Hopefully if it isn't I can install it myself. A very kind person on the mediawiki user's forum has offered to help out if I have any trouble but hopefully I'll be OK. If you use mediawiki software check out the forum at http://www.mwusers.com. Most of the people there are incredibly helpful and kind. And geeky. In a good way :-)

Now I just have to finish backing up the website on it's current server and I can start uploading and setting up. I'm backing up the gallery because I accidentally deleted the backup on my computer and I can't undelete it because it was too large for the recycle bin to hold. Plus I have to back up the last 107 images I uploaded to the wiki and backup both databases. I've been backing them up every day but I want to make sure I have the latest versions to go on the new server.

At least it won't be disastrous if I lose the images from the wiki. They'll still be in the database so the links will be in all the articles so I could just upload them again. I have them on my computer but since mediawiki puts them in random folders when you upload a file it's easier to just download them when you make a backup.

OK, that was boring for everyone who came here for a needlework post.

PS: Yes, I know it's awfully early. Insomnia struck at 4:30 am so I gave in and got out of bed.

I think I have figured out how to use the new virtual private server thing that my webhost made me upgrade to. We're just having a "discussion" about how they've moved me from a server with php 5 (needed to run the wiki) to a server with php 4, and what they're going to do about it. I've been told I didn't "request" it when I ordered the vps. When they told me I had to upgrade they didn't mention that I would have to make a special request in order to have exactly the same version of php that I was using put on the new server. I'm annoyed but they're pretty good at sorting these things out so hopefully they'll get it fixed asap.

I don't know if they have installed imagemagick and netpbm yet. I'm not going to ask about that until I have the php issue resolved. I'm envisioning having to learn to install them myself, which means I'll have to figure out shell access and all that kind of thing. Luckily I have an ftp program that includes telnet and shell so as long as the documentation is good I might be able to do it.

Lest I start sounding like I know what I'm talking about, I can assure you I don't. I'm just repeating what the various "how to" manuals I have read say. I don't pretend to understand it at all. But I can follow instructions as long as they're not too jargonish so maybe I'll be OK.

On the needlework side of things, I just found out about biscornu.

Biscornu are cute little embroidered pincushions made from two squares. They're cleverly stitched together with a decorative seam with the corners offset to produce a shaped eight sided cushion. They're usually finished off with buttons or a charm in the centre. I'm putting one of these on my "to do" list after I finish my suffolk puff/yo-yo coverlet and Miss Binky's jumper.

Biscornu, originally uploaded by litlaskvis.

In case you'd like to try them too, here are some instructions :-)

Own Two Hands - Biscornu instructions and patterns

I received notification this morning that the new virtual private server has been set up. That's the good news. (At the time of writing this the site is still running off the shared server).

Bad news is that even though I was assured I can run this website on the new server with only the skills I told them I had (some HTML and the ability to reinstall my databses using PHPadmin), I can't even figure out how to log in to the damn thing to even start setting stuff up.

And the cost is blowing out much higher than I had anticipated and just gets more expensive by the second. I'm beginning to panic.

I expected $40 US per month, which has already gone up to $50 per month because I need them to install cpanel because I don't know how to run a website using anything else. Luckily the extra $10 also includes upgrades to php and other things I don't know how to run. However it doesn't include the licenses to use these other products and I'm in a panic that it's going to blowout the cost to over double that.

Is the knitting wiki worth the extra cost of $500 to $1200 per year? I have no idea. If it gets too popular then I'll have to upgrade to a dedicated server and that starts at $100 per month before any addons. And the wiki has only been online for 3 and a half months.

Without any ongoing sponsorship or people making regular monthly donations I'm afraid the cost is going to get totally out of control, let alone the technical aspects of running my own server.

What do I need to get this under control?
I need volunteers with the knowledge that I don't have and I need for the presentation of the wiki to look more professional so that we can attract more sponsors. I also need regular donations.

I need:

*Someone I can trust that has the skills needed to run a virtual private server or dedicated server (if we need to upgrade again)

*Someone with PHP and CSS skills - the wiki needs a new skin to make it look more professional

*Short term lend of the skills of a graphic designer. We need a decent logo and someone to work with the php and css person to design the layout of the wiki skin

*Regular monthly donations. I'm going to see if I can set up buttons in the donations section so people can sign up to make a regular monthly donation of 5 or 10 dollars as well as single one-off donations if they choose. Recent donations covered the cost of paying for one year (at $50 per month, not the anticipated $40) and emergency purchase of a new modem when mine fried itself a few weeks ago but it's all gone already.

Believe it or not, a regular $5 donation makes a huge difference. If 25 people signed up to make a monthly $5 donation that would cover the basic cost of a dedicated server.

On a more content related basis we need:

*People to add photos to the pages on http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Pages_Requiring_Photographs
There are some very simple photos needed on a lot of these pages. For example, http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Float. If you've ever knit a fairisle garment then you have a ready-made example of what floats are. If you've ever blogged a photo of the back of your fairisle knitting then you've got the picture ready to go!

*People willing to add their favourite public domain knitting patterns. These can be scanned images from the original vintage books or typed. You'll find copyright info at
http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Knitwiki:Copyrights

*People to add their favourite (free and purchasable) patterns and pattern tips to the favourite patterns category at:
http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Favourite_Patterns

People to add more books and reviews to the book reviews section:
http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Book_Reviews

Got a favourite knitting podcast? Tell us all about it and where to find them by adding an article to the podcast category:
http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Podcasts

If it's about anything to do with knitting please feel free to add it! Even if you just paste in plain text another user can always some along and add the appropriate category, links etc.

I guess I should post some of this to the wiki too.

Or more accurately, 4.5cm circle by 4.5cm circle.

I now have 1,210 suffolk puff yo-yos for my coverlet made.

Shown from the top:

and shown from the front of the bag:

390 suffolk puffs and a heck of a lot of sewing together to go.

Just a quick update on a few things:

Suffolk puff/yo-yo count to date: 1,155 I'm getting a bit behind so I'll be madly sewing little circles tonight to try and make it up to at least 1,200

Miss Binky's Jumper: I've knit the front with the big skull on it up to the armholes but minus the ribbing.

I started above the ribbing with a provisional cast on and used DomiKNITrix's fabulous large skull chart, which fit nicely with an inch or so plain black below and above the motif. Next I'm going to knit the back the same way (but without the skull) and sew the side seams. Then I'll knit the ribbing in the round down from the provisional cast on (so I can lengthen it easily if she grows suddenly) and finish the rest as a basic raglan jumper, knit in the round. With a v-neck.

I did finally tame my gauge with that damn yarn. I ended up ripping it out **again** and starting a third time with 3.75mm needles and 8 fewer stitches to make it the right size. That's when I realised how thick-and-thin the yarn is. In spots it ranges from 10 ply to 6 ply thickness (that's aran to sportweight for the non-Aussies), and the only way I could figure out a consistent gauge was to just knit a huge chunk of the front of the jumper and keep restarting until I got it right. But now it's right. So yay.

I loved knitting DomiKNITrix's large skull chart so much that I'm going to add it to the KnitWiki as a favourite pattern once I've finished Bink's jumper for the sample photo. If you're not familiar with it, the favourite patterns category has notes, tips and sources for popular knitting patterns.

Speaking of the KnitWiki, I've been slowly moving the patterns from the homework section of knitting-and.com over to the wiki, and have been updating the charts as I go. I've done a big chunk, which you'll find here, but there's still a lot more to go.

The whole website will also be moving over to a virtual private server soon, so watch out for updates regarding that. If I break anything during the move I apologise in advance!

Hmmm, I guess that wasn't such a quick update after all...

Whilst I'm attempting to tame that damn Bendigo Mills yarn and sew 470 more little suffolk puffs, I give you the following videos from youtube for your listening pleasure.

BTW, that Bendigo Mills wool is crap. I will **NEVER** buy that stuff again! It's supposed to be 8 ply thickness but it ranges from 6 - 8 ply all over the place. It's not supposed to be a thick and thin yarn! No wonder I've had so much trouble getting a consistent gauge. From now on I'm sticking to using my own handspun. I only bought yarn this time because it's Winter and Miss Binky needed a new jumper.

Oh yeah, videos. These are a few of my favourite songs.

Seven Years in Tibet - David Bowie

Life on Mars (I've also been enjoying the TV show of the same name) - David Bowie

Rainbow Connection - Kermit the Frog :-)

Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Tears for Fears

Don't Drink the Water (amazing live version) - Dave Matthews Band

Hurt - David Bowie & Nine Inch Nails

A very silly, slightly knitting related, song from Sesame Street that I was looking for a while ago when I posted Sesame Street songs but it hadn't been posted to youtube at the time.

The Lamb-Baba - The Count von Count

Yes, I have this on my iPod. Seriously.

The Friendship Song - Fraggle Rock (warning - cute overload may result upon listening to this song)

Let Me Be Your Song - Fraggle Rock
From my very favourite episode of Fraggle Rock, "The Minstrels"
The song starts at about 2:28

You now know far more about my taste in music and my obsession with the muppets than you probably cared to ever know...

Favourites Mosaic #7, originally uploaded by knittingand.

I've been making mosaics of my favourite inspirational and crafty images on flickr. As you can see, I've a hankering for some Japanese "make your own" rubber stamp books. Not that I need them, considering my degree is in printmaking, but they're cool, damnit!

:-)

PS: No I won't be buying them. I still have two Japanese embroidery books on my wishlist to get ;-)

I knit a swatch.

I did my sums.

I double checked the numbers.

I tripled checked just to make sure.

I cast on the right number of stitches.

I used the right size needles.

I knit 2 inches.

It looked a bit too big.

I measured it.

My knitting is six inches wider than it should be.

&!*#!!+*

I guess my vow that I would only craft from stash this year is well and truly screwed.

Miss Brittany asked for a new jumper (sweater) and I ordered yarn. It's all her fault, I swear! I tend to use red, black and white yarns the most and they were exactly the colours she wanted. I didn't even have a full 50gm ball of anything suitable so I caved and bought this from Bendigo Mills

200gms of red and white Colonial hand wash only wool and 800gms of black. I have no idea why I bought so much black, but if there's enough to knit an adult surprise jacket for her as well, then all the better because she asked for one of those as well, plus I can combine it with any oddments of other suitable black and red yarns that I have to make up the difference in the amount of yarn I'll need.

It's a crepe yarn (I think known as a cabled yarn in the US), fairly soft, and I'm hoping it will resist pilling and shrinking. I've used Rustic from Bendigo Mills before and I'm not a fan of that yarn at all unless I want to shrink my knitting on purpose.

Remember how I said, a couple of posts back, that we have no day to day use for mittens in Australia? She wants mittens to wear at break time at school as well. With skulls on. I'll be using my "Custom Fit Fingerless Mitts" pattern to make a "Custom Fit Mittens" pattern, which I'll put in the knitting wiki.

For her jumper I'm going to use Priscilla Gibson Robert's book "Knitting in the Old Way" and my standard favourite pattern for a raglan v-neck jumper. Ribbing will be bold red and black stripes with a black body. I'm going to have to knit the body pieces flat though because I Brittany wants a big skull on the front. For the skull I'm going to use the domiKNITrix free skull chart because it's fabulous.