Okay, I have set a date for the re-opening of the shop: December 1st. The shop has a new logo, new URL, and will have some new inventory. I think a free shipping promo may be in order for the first week or so.
Now to just get out of work and go sew!!!
YAY! I received my ITIL exam results this morning. I passed!! I missed one question, woot woot!
On the needles are several project still: Baby Surprise, Moebius wrap, Mystery KAL Blanket, Mystery KAL Bag (the one I started during the Ravelympics), and Bridget’s socks.
I am also working on inventory for the shop. The fabulous Rob at Bullfrog (where I got my stamp) is cutting me a new template for cutting out the back pieces so I’m pretty excited about that. In the mean time I am working on ones I have had cut for ages. Oh, and my new tags arrived so I will start to use those once my current ones are all gone.
Which leads me to a question about packaging. When I first started, the bags were wrapped in tissue paper. Then for a while I had plastic goody bags, and after that zip top bags. I like the zip top bags because it makes it easy to keep them lint free and visible. Plus, I figure the person can re-use the bag. I’ve been making stickers with my new stamp to put on the bags. THen I may punch a hole in the Moo cards and attach that to the zipper tab as the ‘tag’. Does the old tissue paper packaging seem more ’special’ or are zip top bags just fine?
I started off the day today by going to Dream Dinners with Candace. It is one of those places where you go to prepare a bunch of meals to take home and freeze. I’ve got over about a month’s worth of dinners in the freezer now, and my first one cooking right now. Overall it was pretty fun. It’s like home ec for grownups! You chose what meals you want to make from the menu and when you go in they have stations set up for the various recipes. You go from station to station and use the ingredients according to the recipe and put it all into bags and slap a direction label on it. Everyone has their own shelf in the freezer for their bags and at the end they check all your bags, help you put them into your cooler (or in my case…cardboard box) and off you go.
I was a pretty busy week over all. Wednesday-Friday I was working on Exchange 2007 training. Thursday was the get together for the TYF Mystery Blanket, and Friday I went to see Zach and Miri with Devon and Candace. I adore Kevin Smith movies. Now that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if it is yours…the movie is hysterical!
In shop news, the stamp from Bullfrog Creative Laserworks arrived with the new logo! It is awesome!!! I am waiting on new labels and new moo cards. I also of course need to get sewing so I need to do that too!
I am still in disbelief, worried that I will wake up and this is a dream. But, then again I doubt in my dream I’d still have to police the cat’s litter box. 
Wonderful quotes all over the place, especially over at Indecision 2008:
Michigan Avenue found south side teens and hipsters together on medians, singing the national anthem together, knowing all the words.
I don’t think I recall in my lifetime people “rioting” by getting together with people from vastly different walks of life and singing the anthem of their nation. How awesome!
In other news, I have a headache, Exchange 2007 training was okay today, my legs are sore from walking, I am going to the yarn shop tomorrow, and I still have not finished my Mystery KAL blanket. Oh yeah and I freaking HATE trying to print from my Windows VM in Parallels. Blank bleeping pages here at home. Rawr!
Okay so I felt dorky saying it but when it was called I thought of Star Wars.
David Alan Grier summed up what I was thinking:
Our President is smart again.
It’s like the end of the first Star Wars…. A New Hope.
And Obama promised his little girls a new puppy. I bet they are having the best night ever. Has to be really hard though since yesterday must have been so sad and hard for them with the loss in the family.
So people are starting to call it for Obama. WHEEEE!! I’m excited and nervous and a bit scared of nutjobs.
The Indecision ‘08 stuff on Comedy Central was AWESOME!!!!
“You brought a spoon to a spork fight” - Jon Stewart to Stephen Colbert
“Virginia has not gone Democratic I think since…” - Jon Stewart
“…since Joshua fought the battle of Jericho” - Stephen Colbert
I rolled out of bed a little after 6 this morning to scoot over to the polls. It was in a different spot this year for my precinct but I checked the sample ballot I was mailed and had the right place. Others….well they didn’t bother to check. Rather than being a bit annoyed that they hadn’t checked and realizing that after all just because ‘you always vote at yadda yadda school’ doesn’t mean you will be on the rolls for another precinct they wanted to scream and yet and blame everyone else. Really people? Really? No consideration at all for the poll workers nor for the poor souls that have to figure out all that stuff. Yeah, sometimes things get messed up and whops you have to go a few blocks over to vote, and yeah maybe someone should have come out a little earlier or put the map closer to the end of the line, but geez it was 6:30 in the morning and they were doing the best they could only having been open for a half hour so get over it. Ptttt
So an hour in line and then I scoot back home to get ready for work. I really thought I was going to be way late. I just barely caught the bus right after the one I normally take…yet I got to work at the same time. The connection bus must have been way early or way late, but hey I’ll take it.
Oh yes, and PowerShell sweetness of the day. Say you have a list of names and you want to look for things in that list within a larger file (or files). Easy peasy, and this probably isn’t even the easiest way to do it:
foreach ($line in gc c:\delmbox.txt) { gci * | select-string $line | fl pattern, path}
For each line in delmbox.txt it will get the contents of all the files in the current directory where it fines the line from delmbox.txt and format the results in a list showing the pattern (what you were looking for) and the path (which file it found it in). Right now I am working o having it show part of the line, but just the section I want. Too bad what I am looking is is not a csv file, that would make it way easier.
The work stuff last night went well. My defrags were scheduled until 10am but they finished up around 6 so it actually fit inside the normal maintenance window. I’m not certain if it is my Windows VM or what but RPC over HTTPS is dog slow so I’m not too sure about that change.
Anyways, back to the knitting! Episode 70 of Cast On went up the other day (YAY!) so I had a listen and worked some more o the TYF Mystery Blanket. I am a little way in to Clue #6. It is pretty neat how they have it set up. Each clue starts with a question with two choices. You work pattern A or B depending on your answer. The questions are like do you have straight hair or curly hair? Do you like spaghetti O’s or pasta salad? Rise early or sleep in? Cool huh.
Clue 6 is the rise early or sleep in question. Sleep in, no contest! So as you can see in the photo I am starting to get little triangles that point down for the sleeping in. I also switched from the 24″ Addi Turbo (woosh) circular to a 40″ Knit Picks Options circular. I have quite a lot of 40″ cables. I forgot they came in packs of two….so I ordered like 3, which meant I got 6. Doh! So if anyone need to borrow a 40″ I’ve got you covered.
I have laundry and cleaning to do but I did go get groceries, and got a lot done on the blog design and new shop (I even ordered a custom stamp from the logo I made) so I am going to sit back and knit and watch some movies. There are a lot of projects I want to cast on so I wanna get going!
And a big YARRRR mateys to Jen’s little ones. Such cute little pirates!
Yeah, I’m at home on Halloween. I have to work our maintenance window and defragment some Exchange databases and do an install of RPC over HTTP. Oh yeah, I’m a rockin!
I did however stay home from work today as I am going to be working tonight and in addition to my window stuff I’m going to take the time to do other work stuff since I won’t be interrupted. This afternoon I went to Devon to check out a house she wants to rent then to Olive Garden for lunch and a little shopping. The house is super cool so it will be nice if Devon moves there.
You may also see that I changed up the theme a little bit. I toyed around with the idea of hiring someone to do a logo, but in the end made something myself. This will be part of the new SewPixie Designs shop.
Oh yes, and happy 3rd birthday to my little ferret Napoleon! Yay!
YAY! I finished the glitter shrug and this alpaca triangle shawl. I used nearly 3 skeins of Misti Alpaca. The pattern (from Lion Brand) calls for a crochet edging that you work as you bind off. Problem is…I crochet left handed so I could not for the life of my figure out how the hell to follow the instructions. See, when you crochet left handed you work left to right and I assume that right handers work right to left.
Despite the crochet difficulties I love the shawl. I blocked it and everything. It is a little on the small side but I think it will work nice to warm up a little at work. Really, why do they insist on keeping offices so cold? I can understand a little on the cool side as there are a lot of people, but should my nose be cold?
How about you? Is the temperature of your workplace way out of whack? If you work at home, do you fight over temperature with other inhabitants?