Posh yarn arrived!

Finally. It took ages for the British and U.S. postal services to do their combined thing and deliver this fiber-y goodness to my doorstep. The yarn from Dee got here on Monday, just in time for me to take it to knit knight for show and tell. It’s so pretty! And soft. Yes, this is the yarn that I’ll be designing into a shawl that Dee will bundle with her yarn, and sell as a kit. The 100g hank has 800 yards, and is 20% silk, 80% merino. Have I mentioned that the yarn is gorgeous? Here’s a bigger picture of the other side of the hank.

I’ve been swatching away, looking for just the right stitches to combine into this shawl. I think I have the border nailed down. And a basic shape and style: triangular, knit from the bottom up. I haven’t wound the Diana into a ball yet, so I’ve been swatching with other yarns that I have on hand. Here are a couple shots of the border. Yes, that’s a corner you see there. I actually have the border and the corner figured out first, before anything else. I know. Weird.

In yet another yarn, as the first two swatches finished up the previous yarn remnants, we have two more stitches. The first one I love, love, love, but won’t be using it for this shawl. I don’t think. It’ll have to wait for something else to come along. Probably. The second stitch might need a tiny bit more tweaking, but I think will have a home here. Originally this stitch didn’t have nupps in it. I added those myself. They’re like little flower buds within the flowers. Sweet.

Spam stats

We all know that spam is a serious issue these days. Once the spammers found my blog early on, I discovered that it doesn’t stop with email spam. Word Press, the blogging software I use, integrates with a service called Akismet to stop spam. And I’m glad of it. Since January 2007, Akismet has blocked 20,352 spam comments for me, and has allowed 2,264 legitimate comments to be posted. But a lot of spam still makes it through. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I periodically try out different products and services to stop the spam that Akismet misses. On December 18, 2008 I installed WP-SpamFree, which catches things before Akismet sees them. So far SpamFree has blocked 2,000 spam comments. This week I’ve deleted probably a dozen spam comments that neither service caught. It seemed like a lot until I looked at these stats, especially the ones from SpamFree. I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with the additional 2,000 spam comments in the last three months.

Furry helper caught in the act

I thought Ricki was in a completely different part of the house the other day, until I walked by the guestroom, and saw her helping the brown dress to block. She was sleeping soundly until I came back with the camera. “I’m supervising, Mom. Yeah. That’s what I’m doing. I’m supervising.” Right.