Well... I've been a little ill and a lot injured.  I picked up some kind of headcold or something that caused me to miss work last Thursday 4/27 and work only 3 hours on Friday 4/28.  Meanwhile on Sunday evening 4/23, my right foot started to hurt.  As the week went on, it got worse.  I saw my podiatrist yesterday and he took x-rays.  Good news - no fractures.  Bad news - he thinks I've torn a tendon.  I'll be in a walking cast for the next 3 weeks while we see if that helps it heal.  I'm in a lot of pain and last night woke up at 3am because of it.  I was back in bed by 5am and the alarm went off at 7:30am.  I'm now exhausted and in pain.

On the knitting front, I finished the small basket and felted it.  It's looking pretty good.  I took the 3 baskets to my knitting class last week.  Lauren and I agree that I need to run the largest basket through a hot wash again after I fasten the handles on more securely.  I did a much better job with the handles on the medium and small baskets after seeing how the handles on the large basket turned out.

I re-did the toe on George's left sock and he's much happier with the fit.  Now to wash and block them slightly.  And to get him to wear them out of the house.

I started another pair of socks, this time for me.  I've finished the first sock and last night I started the second sock, and with being up for two hours in the early morning, started on the gusset already.  The 2nd sock will likely be done tonight or tomorrow evening.

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?