Lately, I’ve been trying to do some pretty stuff with my hair. I mean, what’s the point of having down-to-your-butt hair if you wearing it in a messy bun all the time? I’m not trying to do something fancy every day, but when I wash it, if I have the time and inclination, I’ll do something nice with it. In the past, I’ve stuck with either two buns:

or two braids wrapped around my head, Heidi-style:

While I love those two styles, they get pretty monotonous after a bit. So I decided to branch out.  I decided to rock it out Princess Leia, Cloud City style. I put my hair into a high pony tail and divided it into two parts. I braided each part about 2/3 of the way and pinned them into loops. I wrapped the un-braided part around the ponytail holder to make a bun. Easy as pie. Next time I may possibly Leave some hair out of the braids to make a proper bun over the braids, instead of around them.

Still, I think it’s pretty, and practical for work.

I also took (read: made Nick take) this picture. First I made two french braids down the sides, then the braids were wrapped around each other in a figure 8. Apologies for the greenish photo; it was taken on my phone and the flash washed everything out.

The popovers were indeed a hit.  And I did take pictures.  However, in my attempt to delete every photo on my camera in anticipation of an upcoming event… I merely succeeded in erasing every photo on my camera.  So popover-pictures will have to wait until next time I make them.  Which could be sooner than you’d imagine; those buggers were good!

The event for which I unhappily erased all my scrumptious popovers for was our Shire’s “Getting to know the SCA” Non-Event Event.  It was a nice way to get the people newer to the group acquainted with things like persona, heraldry, chivalry, and (most especially!) dance.  I have pictures up on the Flickr account, but I thought I’d post a couple favorites here.

I’m off to try something new. Popovers. Will post an update (possibly with pictures) on the results in an hour or so.

So, I said earlier that I’ve been doing a bunch of reenactment stuff lately. In the interests of posting some of that stuff too, I give you my first real embroidery project. Okay, at least my first project that it 100% covered in stitches.

It was going to be a pouch decoration, but when I made the pouch, I discovered I didn’t much like the way it was put together. So I’m going to cut it off and use it as a patch on a properly-put-together-pouch. Probably for Nick, if he wants it.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with it. I did the outlines first, then the medallions. I had a problem with stitch tension and number of stitches per inch, which resulted in the puckering of the medallions. But for a first attempt? I’m pretty pleased with it.

A foreshortened view of an almost-complete patch that shows some of what I was talking about with the puckering. I think I’ve figured out how and why that happens, though, so as to avoid it in the future. I’m working on embroidering the neckline of Nick’s orange tunic in similar colors. I’ll post some pictures of it later.

So I realize it’s been a while since I posted any knitting.  This isn’t because I haven’t been knitting, but because I’ve been getting things done in a timely and efficient manner. Which doesn’t leave me a lot of time to a. take pictures, or b. blog in the midst of them.   So, to remedy this, I’ve taken some pictures of completed projects in order to post about them in the future, when I have nothing else to say, and more importantly for today’s post, took a couple of pictures of my in progress sock.  Because really, what else do I knit?

This is the Child’s First Sock from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks (best sock book evar. well, tied with New Pathways for Sock Knitters.) You may, perhaps, recall that I knit these socks once before:

Oooh, weren’t they pretty? Yeah. Thing is, though, I had to give them away. They were part of the Vintage Sock Swap I participated in a while ago. While I was knitting them, I fell in love with the pattern. It’s an easily memorized (well, I haven’t actually memorized it, but it’s incredibly intuitive, which amounts to the same thing) 10-row repeat that gives a wonderful shell pattern.  When I knit it the first time, my yarn was too big to get gauge, but this time around I’m using KnitPicks Palette and the stitch count (64 stitches) is my dream count for socks. On the foot it’s meant to decrease to 59 stitches (which is actually variable because of the constantly increasing and decreasing of the instep pattern) but I only decreased to 61.  So far, so good; they fit fine.

Okay, so they’re a tiny bit snug.  I’m actually fine with this for two reasons. 1, the tightness shows off the lace pattern exquisitely, and 2, knitting inevitably relaxes.  I haven’t even washed them yet.  I usually don’t block socks before I wear them, but I think I’ll make an exception in this case.

I’ve been taking a tiny break from these socks to work on reenactment stuff (which will be getting it’s own post here soon) hence the in progress picture. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a sock to go finish.

Tags: has it been this long?, Knitting, red-letter-socks, socks

So. For as long as I’ve had this blog (or another one somewhere on the domain) I’ve run Moveable Type.  First it was because all the cool kids were doing it, then it was because I was passingly familiar with the system.  And frankly, a frillion years ago when I was just starting to want to have my own website, WordPress was a hot mess.

Some of the things I’ve always looked for in any kind of blogging platform are: ease of use and ease of customization (both on the back end and for the blog site itself).  Moveable Type used to provide that for me.  But a couple of iterations ago, call it about four or five months, their interface got crazy different. Enough that I didn’t have the technical know-how to be able to code my own sites.  Not too much of a big deal, as they provide a Style Catcher, a plugin that lets you “catch” themes from MT compatible websites and skin your blog in them.

Except that around the same time that I decided to move the blog from sycamoregrove.org/blog to just sycamoregrove.org, every single one of those sites went away.  I couldn’t find a decent theme for love or money.  About that time, I discovered that my webhost’s Control Panel offered a simplified WordPress installation, and started to consider switching my blogging platform.

I didn’t want to make such a huge decision (I have a long-running, if not oft-updated blog) overnight, so I thought about it for a long time.  Today, when I noticed that MT had released version 5.something-or-other, I decided to upgrade. If I hated the new interface, I’d switch.  I uninstalled Moveable Type, as they suggest, and reinstalled version 5.whatever.  I get an error message, telling me that one of the files can’t be found.  I double check the file. It’s in the right place. I try again.  Still get the message.  I overwrite the file.  Still the message appears.

At that point, I say “fuck it,” delete everything, and install WordPress.  Which works like a fucking charm.  The installation takes, literally, five minutes (if it wasn’t offered through my cPanel, it would probably have taken longer) and even updates to the newest version for me with one click of a button. Ten minutes of searching on the web and I find fifteen-ish themes that I download and install, and I don’t even have to unzip them first!

One of the things that always vexed me with MT was the lack of interface between the blog dashboard and Flickr. If I wanted to include photos from my Flickr site, I had to open them, select a size, and copy/paste the raw code.  Even the “blog this” feature available on the Flickr website will only publish one photo per blog post. WordPress, on the other hand, has a plugin that allows me to browse my photostream, select pictures, choose the size at which I want to display them, and blog as many of them as I want to in a single post. I’m not trying to say that MT didn’t have plugins, they did. But I found it was less intuitive on the MT side. I hadn’t even thought to look for a Flickr plugin for MT; they simply don’t make as big a deal over them. On Wordpress, it was the first thing I did, other than look for themes.

…

Okay, so that was a whole lot of ranting. And explanation. If you didn’t make it through the whole thing, I understand. And for those of you who just skipped to the end in hopes of a pretty picture, the gist of it is this: I got a new blogging platform and it’s really cool! I’m much more likely to blog now. And, a picture.

So, my work has a fairly strict dress-code. Black, khaki or navy pants or skirt, white collared shirt, white sweater or sweatshirt, sneakers or flats. Sometimes I like to go as far as I possibly can within the realms of that code, just to piss off my superiors.

Senior Show, originally uploaded by beautysmuse.

In addition to graduation pictures, there’s now several from my senior show up on the Flickr page.
I’m attempting to see how this whole “blog this” feature works. It’s looking like I get one picture per blog post, which isn’t going to be so very handy.
Still, for Eye-Candy Fridays, or knitting updates, or stuff like that… I think it’ll be fine.

So, it’s been a hectic few weeks. In my defense, I’ve had a lot of stuff going on.
Like my senior show. And graduating.
You know. Stuff.
I’m still really tired, and I don’t have a lot of energy to be really eloquent about everything, but I’ll leave you with a little slice of commencement to tide you over.

Senior BFA Thesis in Drawingby Courtney Pritchard

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, December 10th, 4-6refreshments provided

Gallery Hours:Tuesday - Friday 10 - 4Saturday 1 - 4

Department of Art, 101 Atrium GalleryArts and Journalism BuildingBall State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306

You guys... This means I'm graduating! For reals!

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