Eastburn Adventures

Obviously, it's been a challenge for me to post to the blog this past week. I can't blame not having enough time, but I think it was more of the denial and frustration I was suffering with the Garden Path Socks. I was so excited to have finished the Pink Ribbon socks and be making progress on The Plan, that I somehow fell off the knitting mojo wagon.

So after a week, here's the progress I've made on the Garden Path Socks - and why. First, because I was using my favorite Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn, I excitedly cast on using my standard size 1 1/2 (2.5 mm) needles. I zoomed up the toe and started the pattern, making the larger size because the foot measurements were closest to mine. About 6 rows in, I realized it was going to be way too big. So I did what any knitter would do - I looked at the pattern for the first time. (I'm making them toe-up, Magic Loop, so it wasn't necessary - so I thought - to consult the pattern until I was ready for the chart.) Uh, yeah. Wendy used size 0 needles. I didn't want to use 0's, so I frogged back and began with the smaller size, still using my 1 1/2's. Still too big. Drat it. Frogged again.

So I dug out my 0's, cast on again, and this time returned to the larger size. Same result. These socks were going to be huge. (Do you understand now why I didn't take any in progress photos?) Frogged again, back to the smaller size, and away I go. This time I get to Row 10 in my first pattern repeat and realized that it's just not looking right. So I looked at the pattern again and realized that I'd been doing the chart on every row, but the chart is only for the odd rows. I failed to knit around on all the even rows. Rip it again. I started over, this time doing the chart right - and still - these socks are too big. So about 8 rows in, I decided to rip back to the toe yet again, and decided not to do the selvedge edge stitches, which means I'm only using 62 total stitches instead of 66. Finally, it's working. But my other problem? A big part of The Plan is for me to resume my sweater knitting this month, and since the sock is my only portable project, I only get to work on it in the car. It may be the end of the month before I finish this pair - which I have to do for Knit Together's Green Sock KAL.

My other challenge is that I upgraded my phone this weekend and finally got my long-awaited Blackberry Pearl! (In red - I bet Sheri will be jealous!) Since this is a completely new format for me, it's been a little difficult getting used to the technology, and trying to personalize the phone the way I want it. The biggest issue was trying to get my contacts loaded from my laptop. I have a Windows Vista OS on my laptop, and I don't have Outlook. I do have a Palm T|X that I use for my contacts, calendar, and tasks - along with Google Calendar - but when I bought it, it wasn't Vista compliant. I had to download a beta version of the Palm Desktop to use - but get this - I had to download it to an XP machine - Vista wouldn't take it! So last night I learned that even though my Blackberry software was Vista compliant - it was not compatible with my Vista version of Palm Desktop.

So what did I do? Kate should be proud of me for figuring this out. First, I exported my Vista Palm Desktop contacts to a CSV file. Then I e-mailed the file to myself and headed down to the basement where the old XP machine lives. That PC has the older version of Palm Desktop on it, so I then imported my CSV file into it. The problem is that it didn't map correctly because the newer version had more fields than the old version so I had some cleanup to do. After I cleaned up the file, I then loaded the Blackberry software onto the XP machine. Went to the Desktop Manager, set up the synchronization to pull from Palm Desktop, and presto! all the contacts are now in my Blackberry Pearl. And to think - it only took about 8 hours!

I'm going to spend the rest of the night knitting now.