I've been very busy recently.  Ended up working both Saturday and today as we're in a crunch to release a product.  It's been a case of fix one bug and introduce two new ones.  At least I get paid time and a half since I'm a contractor rather than a salaried employee.  I've been having trouble sleeping so with this on top of it, I'm really tired!  The product needs to be done by Friday EOD and I have a couple of other products to test so this will be another busy week at work.

Meanwhile, I felted the second basket and it's looking good.  I hope to finish crocheting the third, smallest basket and get it felted tonight so I can take the set to show off at Tuesday's knitting class.  I still need to re-do George's sock toe, but I might be able to do that on the bus to and from work.  Then it'll be time to come up with a new project.  Any ideas?  More socks? A knitted felted bag?  Another Faroese-style shawl?

I got some advice from a co-worker in another department and went out to the Mercury Support Knowledge Base.  I used a GetROProperty command to get the encoded URL and feed it back to the script so that I always have the URL created by the run.  I've also figured out how to parameterize the starting URL so I can change country, language, etc for our international purchase paths.  I'm feeling very good about my progress with QTP and VBScripting right now.

I felted the blue basket yesterday and wanted it tighter so I turned up the heat on the hot water heater this morning, then ran it thru the washer again tonight.  It's drying now.  Meanwhile, last night I finished the green basket (medium size), except for the handles as they need to be in the blue yarn and I need some more.  This basket holds only 5 of our stuffed animals.

I finished George's socks tonight at knitting class.  He tried them on and I need to re-do the toe on the left sock because it's a little tight.



And yes, there is a left sock vs right sock.  I'm knitting socks for George because his right foot is 2 sizes larger than his left foot.  This is the result of foot surgery he had when he was 10 years old.  At first I worried about how to distinguish the socks from each other: knit a L on one, R on the other; put a different color for a row on the sole; etc.  I didn't need to do any of that after all as the size difference is so obvious!  (Except in the foreshortening in this pic.)

I finished sewing up the sides Sunday evening.  I don't know why I put it off for so long other than I hate seaming.  It's really cute and I plan to take it to show off at my Tuesday evening knitting class.  Then I need to get it mailed off to the birthday girl. 

Happy Birthday, Sarah!

Tuesday night I started a crocheted basket to be felted.  The large size is huge as I'm using a 15mm hook.



I finished the basket, except for the handles, tonight and filled the basket with our stuffed animals that live in the living room.  I was able to fit 7 in this basket.

I'm a little behind on the Shrug for Sarah as I've been distracted by two other projects and working late at work.  I've finished the knitting.  Sarah's birthday is Tuesday so I need to get this done!  Actually she'll be shocked if a present were to arrive on time.  I've got Maggie and the girls trained.  They now like getting my gifts a little late as it's a second chance to celebrate their birthdays or xmas.



I really like the Mock Rib pattern.  It's pretty on both sides as you can see in these photos.

Right Side on left/top, Wrong Side on right/bottom
   

I knitted this ballet wrap pattern, called "Otis" that I got from Knitty.com for George's sister Michelle.  I used yarn I've had in my stash for years: Sirdar Denim Tweed DK in colour Violet.

I was knitting this up until a few hours before I gave it to her.  She immediately put it on and George took this photo.  Michelle really likes it and wears it with a pretty summer dress she bought to go with the wrap.

The purchase path I'm trying to automate in QTP takes the username, user type and password from the sign in page and obscures it in the navigate to URL upon clicking Submit.  I need to grab this URL and parameterize it to include the latest entered info as right now my recording just wants to return to the recorded URL.  I finally found the URL string I needed.  Then I lost it.  I had made a lot of changes to my script, and rather than doing the smart thing of saving the changes with a different filename before restoring the original file, I just went back to the version I had started with.  Argh!  At least I now know it's possible to find this so on Monday I'll keep looking.  Wish me luck, okay?

Back in April 2005, I knitted a scarf using some fun yarn I picked up at Joanne's Fabrics.  The two balls I knitted left the scarf a little shorter than I wanted it to be so I looked in my Barbara Walker books of stitches and added lace ends to the scarf.  I gave this to Catherine when I went down to visit my sister Maggie and her family in May 2005.  She immediately started rubbing it against her face, and when we travelled to Ireland and London in June/July 2005, she brought the scarf with her.



The lace blocked out very nicely.  I used a black chenille I bought on eBay years ago.