Follow Friday: Epbot

From Epbot

From About Page:
Hiya. I'm Jen. You might know me from my other blog, Cake Wrecks.

In the past I've been a Jungle Cruise skipper, a cash office accountant, a children's book inventory expediter, a house painter, and a clown - not necessarily in that order. Today I'm a blogger, which is kind of like "clown" and "expediter" mashed together. And from the beginning, I've always been a geek.

Epbot is where I share the things I like, the things that make me laugh, and the things that I'm working on. If it's sci-fi, steampunk, clever, crafty, or cute, I probably love it.

I also quote The Princess Bride and Ghostbusters a lot. Sorry.

Hope you like it.

- Jen

I talked about my love for Jen and her Cake Wrecks team. Epbot is where Jen unwinds and shares all of her non-cakey interests. Cake Wrecks led me to believe that Jen is an entertaining humorist. Epbot has be convinced that she is my long lost BFF. She matches my Disney fandom and general geekery. I my (completely not creepy at all) fantasy world we'd be be neighbors. I'd teach her to knit, and she's lend me steampunk books and we would have regular squee fests playing games and watching movies. Sadly my (completely not creepy at all) fantasy world doesn't exist, I just lurk on her blog and pretend that everything she writes is something she is sharing specially for me (which admittedly does seem a little creepy...) Go check out her blog. You will quickly be able to tell if her interests match up with yours and if they do, you'll likely wish she was your best friend too.

Twitter Bonus: @cakewrecks

And Now Something Completely Different - 2KCBWDAY5

From Drop Box

This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create.

You may have noticed that I skipped Day 5. It wasn't a neglectful skip, in fact, I've been working pretty hard for Day 5. The art in the header and footer of my blog is by Kurt Halsey. I love it, but it is not mine. I didn't make it or buy it, so I've always felt a little bad having there. Ever since I started blogging regularly, I've been thinking of changing that art to something that I have a little more claim to. I decided to do some doodling and try to make something of my own.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

I didn't get very far into the doodles before I realized that I don't really have a very good way of making my drawings digital or working with them once they get there. I found some software for my new laptop and I tried working on the one idea that seemed the easiest for my photoshop skills.

From Drop Box

I wanted to include a kitty in some way, but I didn't have the confidence for that. I like the skyline because I love my city. You may notice that I did a bit of a mash up and added my favorite building from Chicago into the mix too. Unfortunately, I didn't finish this the first night I started working on it. I didn't finish with it on the second night either so I saved my picture and closed my program. As it turns out, you cannot close and save items to open them later if you haven't paid for the full software. Discovering this was extremely frustrating for me and so my little art project has been abandoned. It was fun to play with for a while though.

I'm still considering changing up the look of my blog, but I haven't found much that says Currently Purring like my current set up. Well, except for this:

From icanhascheezburger

A Tale of Two Yarns - 2KCBWDAY1

From Eskimimi Knits

A Tale of Two Yarns - Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

From Drop Box

The first yarn that I want to talk about is the yarn I love. It has been with me since Arkansas, and I occasionally I pull it out to fondle and contemplate. I love this yarn because it is incredibly soft and cuddly. I don't have much grey or black yarn, but this color is somehow perfect. It soft and simple and still compelling. It is the warmest black I have ever seen. Beyond that, it has great memories. It was a gift in one of my very first yarn swaps when I was still just learning to knit.
What I don't love is that I just couldn't find the perfect project for it there. Initially I tried to make a Feather and Fan Scarf, but it was just too short for my liking. I frogged it and set it aside while I searched for a better pattern. Right now I have the two balls wound up together to make a Foliage. That didn't work out so I tried again with a Hermione. It didn't seem right either. I started to search around Ravelry for someone destashing so I would have a scarf's worth, but I never had luck.  Lately, I've been considering picking up another couple balls in a different color and maybe making the Chevron Scarf. I'm sure if I wait long enough, Knitty will show up with the perfect pattern.

This second yarn has been quit an opposite experience. I had never heard of Frog Tree prior to receiving it, but I've been reading everyone on the internet rave about Noro since before I knew what yarn weights were. I finally picked some up for myself when I was visiting family in Seattle over the holidays. Everyone was right about the colors. They are fantastic. I love the long slow transitions and the combination is perfect for my Seattle memories. The trouble is that it feels absolutely horrible in my fingers. It is scratchy and stiff. There are bits of plant embedded in it. I don't mind every so often, but this is a lot. I've been making a shawl with it, and I don't know if I'll want to have it around my neck. I haven't washed it yet so I've still got my fingers crossed, but right now, I just don't understand why a process knitter would use it.

Please go check out some more fiber filled posts from Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2011.

Blog Week is Coming

From Eskimimi Knits

Eskimimi Knits has announced the 2nd Annual Knitting & Crochet Blog Week! My friend Laura participated last year. I thought it was a great idea then, but I wasn't blogging much at all then. This year, I am very excited.  I am already thinking through what I might write up.  I even have a challenge I am setting up for myself for Day 5. Are you planning to participate? Have you looked at the topics or are you waiting until the time comes to look? (I confess, I peeked before I finished looking at the rest of the page.)

Follow Friday: Knitty Blog

If you don't tweet, you may not know what Follow Friday is. It is not that hard to figure out, but I've decided start it as a regular feature on my blog. I am going to go through my blog roll and share with you who I follow in my RSS feed.

From the Knitty Blog about section:

This is the blog for Knitty magazine, which lives on the web at knitty.com.

The four women that make Knitty happen write about things here. We write about Knitty and Knittyspin, and more often, about whatever else we think is interesting. Or silly. Or both. You can tell who’s written a post by looking next to the date.

I follow Knitty because of their obvious awesomeness. Knitty is my favorite online magazine. The tutorials are fantastic and their patterns are always fun. Their blog is just as wonderful. They are of course a go-to source for what is happening in the fiber world. They have some fun contests and giveaways. I trust them to share with me the latest and greatest yarn bombs. Their posts are full of fantastic pictures (many of which are drool worthy yarns and fibers.) If you didn't know that the ladies of Knitter were blogging, please go check them out.

Twitter Bonus: @knittydotcom

Edited to add Twitter account.

Blogtastic!

We've all been there. Someone shares a link with you and the next thing you know, your entire day is gone and you have no reasonable explanation. I've lost absurd amounts of time to bouncing penguins, filling rice bowls, learning the meanings of baby names and searching though public domain books. Even worse, were my first encounters with YouTube, Facebook, and Ravelry. Today, Erin over at A Dress A Day shared one of those links.

What she shared is a blog that has top ten lists of blogs. There you can easily check out the top 10 blogs on technology in education, top 10 mental health blogs, top 10 blogs for frugal living, top 10 celebrity blogs. Of course there are 10 popular knitting blogs, and 10 more popular knitting blogs (because knitters never really do fit into the same boxes as everyone else do they). I looked at blogs on a least a dozen different topics, and hours of my day vanished just like that. Unfortunately, I have set up my web browser so that I can easily click a button and subscribe to an rss feed. I lost track after the third top ten list how many blogs I subscribed to today. Now I have some how committed an unknown amount of my future time to this link even though I've vowed that I won't click on it again for at least a month. I imagine I'll get some great stuff out of it, but I predict a huge rss feed culling in the near future.

Check it out. Not because I want to condemn you to the same time sink, but because I want to hear what cool new blogs you found.

Election Thoughts

Yesterday started with voting, but we quickly found our way back to our normal Tuesday routine of heading into the city for our free movie, dinner, and a nice walk. I skipped my knitting group partly because we came back later than normal and mostly because I wanted to get things ready for our election results monitoring. Since we weren't going to or hosting a party, I knew we would have a lot of time to pass that normally would be spent tuning out pundits and chatting with other people. Our distraction solution was to second tv in the living room so we could watch the election and still busy ourselves with the PlayStation. Clearly I haven't been living here long enough, because it never occurred to me to congregate at Times Square for last night. By the time I saw all the people there on tv, I had already opened a bottle of wine and I was settled into my comfy pants. I stayed up way past my bedtime and had a great night. Even though I was exhausted, when I went to bed, my head was swimming with things to write about. Here are just some of them:

• How I feel about Barack Obama
• How Barack Obama feels about Higher Education
• How Academics feel about the election
• How awful general chat was in WoW yesterday
• How distasteful it is to boo someone who has just been elected president
• How disappointed I am about Proposition 8
• How it was different to be in a blue state
• How I made my voting decisions as a Hillary supporter
  
• How uncomfortable I was with the rest of my ballot since I haven't been a part of this community for very long
• How knitters have shown support for their candidates
• How exciting the voter turn out was
• How beautiful it was to see people partying in the streets
• How it felt to vote for the winner for the first time

Thankfully, I slept on it and remembered that those are not the conversations that I want to have with strangers on the Internet. Those are the conversations I want to have with my friends over a good meal. It is difficult because they are all so far away, and those dinners will probably never happen. That will change though, and the excitement has just begun. Since I am not a political writer, and I have no intention of becoming one, I wrote about the technology used to share the election results.

Famous!

Last night the Yarn Harlot was in Brooklyn. I had never read any of Stephanie's books, but I've been reading her blog since before I knew how to knit. I wasn't going to pass up this opportunity to see her speak and get my hands on her new book. The Barns and Noble that I was headed for was in Park Slope. Since Park Slope was home base during our apartment hunt last year, I figured I could handle it. Nope. I got off the subway and walked almost 15 blocks in the wrong direction. I managed to turn around and find my way. I missed out on the leisure reading time that I had planned, but I wasn't late for the reading. (As you all know, I like to leave plenty of cushion time for these very reasons.)

She gave a great talk about what she goes though making a book, and how when you add knitting to something it no longer the same. (Specifically, a book about knitting, becomes a knitting book, even if it is a book of essays and not patterns.) Then she read an essay from her new book on knitting and self-esteem. Finally she answered some questions. Then we all lined up to have our books signed. Over a year ago she came in contact with the Charity Blanket that I worked on. If I was thinking straight, I would have given her an update, but it didn't occur to me until after I got home.

As I waited in line I received the greatest compliment I could ever imagine. A knitter told me that she was debating with herself over whether or not my sweater was store bought. To have my sweater mistaken for store bought by anybody is incredible, but to have a knitter consider it is almost overwhelmingly flattering. Then when I got up to her table, the Yarn Harlot herself gave me a compliment. I mentioned that I was proud of it because it was my first project with sleeves. That earned me a spot on her blog! I have no idea what snork means but clearly I'm famous now. I may not be Kinneared any time soon, but it is a compliment that I will be proud of for a long time.