Well, I've had it with Symfony. There is just too little documentation for me to be able to do what I want and whenever I search for a plugin I can only find plugins that only work with version 1.0 and since version 2 has been out since at least the start of the year when I started using Symfony I find that to be extremely frustrating.

I've spent the last weekend or two working with Textpattern but I've finally given up on that as well. Apparently when you write a new blog entry any newline characters are turned into html break tags and since I like to write proper html for my posts I end up with paragraphs and break tags. Of course I could write my posts as one long string with no visual breaks but if I start making compromises now I'll just end up frustrated in 6 months after having invested even more time into trying to manipulate someone else's product into doing what I want.

So, I'm giving up and going back to my own hand written code. Working with frameworks is just not worth the trouble. From now on I'm only using someone elses framework/software if it does what I want exactly out of the box. No more spending hours and hours searching through documentation and forums trying to coerce software written with one paradigm in mind into behaving as if it was constructed under a different paradigm. As a note I also tried Wordpress but at the end of the 'famous 5 minute install' I couldn't find my blog. Clicking on the 'view Cleverbit' link from the admin pages (which were not as easy to find as I would have expected) just took me to a directory listing of my webiste home page. Some 5 minute install. Anyway, my new streamlined, simplified site should be up by the end of the month and I'm putting an emphasis on content rather than structure and organization (which is perhaps the most major flaw with the current cleverbit.org site) and then I can start on my NEW project - reading/parsing knitting patterns and then checking them for errors, providing size and modification suggestions, and other similar tasks.

Well I finished the first sock. I decided for this project to use smaller needles for the heel and toes since I've never done that before and I'm knitting these socks a tad on the loose side anyway. The toes took two tries but in the end I decided on a blunt toe with fewer decrease rows rather than the pointier version in the pattern. I went back to the second sock using the needles I had been using for the toe of the first sock. It took me about an inch to realize that I was supposed to be using a size larger. And I only realized when I did because the colors were pooling a bit oddly.

Anyway, I'm back on track now and this is the only pair of socks I'm working on at the moment so hopefully only a week or two and they'll be done. Overall I'm happy with this pattern but I could have gone for a smaller needles size I think. I'm still too paranoid about them coming out too small.

I've finished this project but not yet taken any photos. I'm happy although not ecstatic about how it came out. The only pattern modification I made (I think, I may have widened it and forgotten) was to do an extra repeat of the center pattern. And I still have plenty of yarn left, I wish I'd widened it another pattern repeat at least. Also I'm not thrilled with the edges but perhaps with a second, more careful blocking I could fix that.

I've had this yarn for a little while and I wasn't really happy with how the project I started was turning out so I decided to make the thermal from knitty.com instead. I've looked at some photos on ravelry and I think I'll probably raise the neckline a bit but since I started with the sleeves I wont' have to worry about that for a while. My original plan had been to try to learn to knit continental style while making this sweater but after ripping out the first few inches of the sleeve half a dozen times I've given up for a little while. I thought with a row of knit, a row of purl, and a few mixed rows per pattern repeat I would have a good chance to get better at continental knitting but actually I just kept messing up which row I was on and forgetting to increase so I gave up. I don't think those rows were particularly loose, although I do find keeping a good tension with continental to be particularly tricky, but I did notice that I was getting a bit of space between my dpns.

Anyway the first sleeve is almost finished. I'm making the second size although I changed the repeats to be every 4 rows for half the increases and then every 8 rows since keeping track of every sixth row was a bit to complicated for my taste (I was working on this project on vacation and I wanted to chat, not count rows.) Also I decided to increase a bit extra so now I'm making the sleeves in the 3rd smallest size - I didn't like how some of the sleeves on ravelry looked that were too tight.

Now that I've gotten going I'm happy with how the texture/color combo is working out, and I'm still motivated (for the moment) to keep working on it even though it's size 3 needles.

Me: I didn't get anything for my Dad for his birthday.
Kim: you are a bad daughter.
Me: But you never get anything for your Dad, you are a bad son.
Kim: No I'm not.
Me: That's a double standard.
Kim: Yup.
Me: Well half of all your standards are mine.
Kim: Well that makes it a single standard, what good is that?

Kim and I were down visiting his parents this weekend in Plymouth, which as many of you know is where the pilgrims began their long, arduous journey across the ocean to live in peace and harmony and religious tolerance in a new land. Or so they say. Anyway, I have now been to that very spot from whence their journey commenced and I have to say its not a particularly exciting or noteworthy spot. In fact its rather commercial in a slightly tacky way (Yankee candle anyone? - don't get too excited about the irony, I think I was the only one who got it) and a tad crowded with a mixture of sailboats and naval ships. Conveniently enough there was a friendly man standing only feet from the Mayflower Memorial offering boat rides (at the top of his voice) to see the naval ships but I felt that it was a moment for thinking about how we won the revolutionary war and threw off our tyrannical British rulers, not about how impressive their naval fleet is.

Speaking of which, Kim and I had a lengthy discussion of the meaning and origin of the word 'tariff' the other day since they like to use it here to refer to things like phone calling plans and train ticket prices and I've only ever heard of it in reference to a tax (as in unfair tariffs from King whomever which we must rebel against). We looked it up on line and it seems the most common definition is something like "duty: a government tax on imports or exports" which would suggest that I am right, but then there is always the random "any table of charges, as of a railroad, bus line, etc." (thanks dictionary.reference.com) to keep the argument going.

Anyway, it was a lovely day and we did manage to get a few photos that aren't full of people or boats or random stuff.

Oh, I forgot to mention that they call the bit where you can walk along the path next to the water the "hoe" :-).

The rest of our trip was spent at Frost Valley YMCA in the Catskills. It was raining or misting most of the time we were there but it wasn't so cold or soaking wet as to make the trip to miserable. We had heard rumors of having to sleep in tents or dorm style housing and I were so relieved to discover we had a clean, private room with a private bath that I didn't mind the weather so much.

The bride and groom organized a 'field day' which was full of silly games and not really my sort of thing so I went on a hike instead. You'll notice a map below. My path is marked in lavender.

At first I wasn't quite sure of how well the trails were labeled and how trail like they actually were and I was looking for the blue trail and I came across some blue plastic ribbon tied around some trees so I thought I had found what I was looking for and I started blazing my way through the forest. The blue trail was supposed to be moderately difficult so the fact that there wasn't really a trail and only some ribbon tied around an occasional tree didn't seem that odd. Until I came to a cliff with a tiny tree growing straight out the side with a little blue ribbon tied around it; then I got suspicious. I tried to figure out a way around the sheer rock but after about 10 mintues of stomping through the wet and muddy woods I gave up and declared defeat and went back down to follow the yellow trail which was an easy trail. I walked along that for a while until I came to a sign for a waterfall. This path was also marked as moderately difficult so I wasn't sure if I should follow it given all the warnings about staying on the trail and turning back at the first sign of water, mud or snow, especially after my previous moderate experience but the yellow trail I had been following was quite well cleared and it was clearly marked with little signs (rather than random ribbons) so I decided to give it a go. The path to the waterfall turned out to be up a bit of a hill but other than that it was an easy walk with a nice wide trail and a little wooden platform for viewing and photographing the waterfall at the end.

When I finally made it to the end of the yellow trail I decided that my first attempt at a moderate trail hadn't been a trail at all but a series of randomly marked trees and that I needn't have declared myself an easy trail girl after all, so I set off on a moderate trail around the bottom of the camp. This took a bit longer than I expected but was quite picturesque with lots of little brooks and waterfalls and even a tiny salamander. It was through what was sign posted as a model forest. I don't really know what a model forest is but most of the streams had little rock paths or wooden bridges across them so perhaps a model forest is one that behaves as a model citizen of the earth and grows in a way most convenient for tromping through.

I did finally make it back in time for the wedding and of course the party afterwards. My shoes and jeans were rather soaked but fortunately the sun was out the next morning when we got up and just an hour or so in the sun and my shoes were dry enough to wear home.