Now Norma Knits

I Am Pleased To Announce That All Our Troubles Are Over. You Don't Need To Donate Any Longer

The day before yesterday, Cookie and I got the following email in our RedScarfFund email account. It was from the Senate's Official Mail, and the subject line was GOOD NEWS.  

It is indeed GOOD NEWS, and it's all official and everything. Please note the gmail address to respond to -- it starts with "sec," as in, you know, Securities and Exchange Commission, so it HAS to be all on the up and up.  THANKS, LINDA HILLS!  (Though I do notice that the email is signed by David Mark. I guess Linda Hills must be Mr. Mark's assistant.)

Good day

This is to officially inform you that ATM CARD(54373639574387474) with pin
number 822 worth $6.8 Million Dollars has been accredited in your
favor,Please Contact:Miss Linda Hills at
(seclindahills@gmail.com) With the following,


Full Name:
Delivery Address:
Age:
Occupation:
Sex:
Country:
Direct Phone Number:

Payment Mode:
1) Delivery of ATM card by courier
2) Bank to bank Transfer.

Regards,
Senate President
David Mark.

So, no worries.  Cookie and I have decided to split it three ways with the Orphan Foundation. Though I really had to pressure her to agree to that. She said she'd rather just give a million to the orphans and split the rest with me. This is why I have to keep right on top of her. 

BUT SERIOUSLY FOLKS:  The total from the patterns that you purchased from Susan for this cause, and that she will forward to the OFA, is $259.64!!!!  What a highly successful idea as a way to get something nice, while at the same time indirectly donating to a cause. I am sooooo appreciative of your generosity, Susan and all!

And I was kidding in the title. We still need you to donate.  :D

Blogging Lite, or Come On In, The Water's Fine!

Over the years, many of my readers have expressed that they'd like to have a blog, but they don't know how to go about it. Some others have said they aren't sure they'd have something "interesting" to say (not that I ever let that stop me), or they couldn't keep up with it on a regular basis, or various and sundry other things along those lines.

Does that sort of describe you? 

Do you also feel, though, that you'd like just a bit more space, and your own personal space -- decorated to your liking and where you are in charge of content and format -- to allow you to express yourself or share something with others? To have an option that falls somewhere between that of being a full-on blogger and the status updates on the networking services such as Facebook and Twitter?  

If any of those thoughts has ever crossed your mind, you might want to check out the new blog platform that Typepad launched yesterday. It bridges the gap between the 140-character one-liner status updates of a networking site and a full-length blog. And best of all, it's all fully integrated with all those other services -- you can have simultaneous posting to multiple sites at once. It's FREE! And it looks really nifty.

I'm even thinking of changing my Red Scarf informational blog to the Micro format because I like the look of the Chroma design so much, and the micro format really fits what I'm now doing in that blog.

It could look something like this:

 

So what are you waiting for?  Go take a look at some of the new Typepad Micro blogs, and try it for yourself. It's FREE! It's cool! You can blog from your iPhone or your BlackBerry. It's like a little black dress -- fun and sexy and suitable for every occasion!  

Did I mention, it's FREE?!  

Alert The Media!

On Thursday night I was all over Facebook saying, "Alert the Media! I'm knitting!" (or I was about to).  And then Judith R. commented that she had just said that somewhere in Ravelry.  Great minds and all that. (To new readers, this is significant because it's been so.damn.long.since.I.have.knitted.anything.  Kind of silly, this being a so-called knitting blog and all that.)  

As it turns out, I think I knitted ten whole rows on my tomato red scarf when Grey's Anatomy first came on, but Mr. Jefferies was having none of that and kept doing things to interrupt during the entire two-hour show. So the knitting activity was definitely not front-page news.  But at least it was something.    

Last night I thought how much fun it would be to start a Ravelry group with that name.  (Alert the Media!)  I searched, and could not find a group along the same lines that already exists.  If I'm wrong, someone should probably let me know. 

Look at me, once a charter member of the Ravelry Underachievers group, all grown up and going to start my own group!  

Not so fast.

I started to do it, but I got whelmed by the banner-creating phase. The group's idea would be a place for those of us who have inadvertently or unavoidably taken a hiatus from knitting.  Alert the Media! would be our celebratory cry when we take up the needles again, even if only for ten (or two) rows of a scarf.  All I need is a banner/button design.  Anyone wanna help?  If we get several entries, perhaps we can have a vote and contest.  And in the meantime, go on in and join the group.

Faith Restored

Typepad has heard us, and they are doing the right thing.  I had a delightful bridge-building telephone conversation yesterday with a couple of their good people. They reached out to me in a very positive way, I felt great vibes, and I feel confident that they are going to do right by us.  

I'm overtired because I've had too many odd work hours, complicated by a headache of three days' duration (not a terribly debilitating one, but it does grate on a person's psyche and endurance after a while), so I won't write much tonight -- I need to have an early bedtime.  

But I wanted to pop in to say that the blog comment/email situation is going to be fixed as soon as possible (hopefully by the end of this week). I feel that they have exactly the right attitude, and they do appreciate us as customers. 

There still will likely be a few changes in my blog (I really do love "NowNorma.com"), but those are just normal evolutionary changes that reflect me and the time for, as Ginevra of Typepad put it, "a new coat of paint."

They want me to extend their apologies for the hasty handling of that comment change -- especially just before a holiday weekend, of all things -- and to assure you that they are working on getting things back the way we want them, post-haste.  

Mr. Jefferies also regrets that he missed Terrier Tuesday yesterday, and he wants me to tell you that it is all my fault, because I stayed away from home that night because of work, and I totally forgot to leave him the laptop.  Will you take a raincheck?

Ever Evolving

There's more domain news:  I bought the domain name nownorma.com, which, when I think about it, is more "me" than normaknits.com.  My blog is pretty thin on the knitting, pretty eclectic, and I hope like me, ever evolving.  So how much more fun is nownorma.com?  Easy to remember, and really more reflective of the growing and changing me and what this blog is probably going to become in the next few years, than normaknits.com.  

Cookie will love this:  Another suggestion the domain company made that is available is "thenorma.com"  I almost went for it, but how many domains does a person need?  Narcissism can only go so far.  And going around buying up domain names, while it is easy, cheap, and seems like a break from all this stress, isn't really going to take me very far unless I get back up and dust myself off and ... you know the old yarn... start all over again.  

Well, that's about as far as I've got.  I ran into a brick wall right off the bat.  I tried to open a Wordpress account, and it said I already have one.  I do?  Well, damn.  Turns out because I am a member of Sandy's Warm Hands blog (thanks, Sandy!  mwahaha), I have a Wordpress account, and they say that is my primary account, and I can't open another one with the same email address.  Oh, for fucksake.  I do NOT want to start another email address.  So, all right, I did some tweaking and crap in there, and finally got it right, I thought. Well, not really.  I got partway up the wall only to find out that it's still giving me the .wordpress.com ending.  Not what I want.  I'm sure that's an easy fix once I get a host.  But *SIGH* then the tutorial says to click on "Tools" and then "Import."  But there is no import option in my tools section.  I look more closely, and apparently it believes I am still Sandy and this is NOT my primary blog, and I cannot import and therefore change everything.  Do I neeeeeeed this crap?  

I feel like I'm in military basic training.  I'm gonna make it through the tire course eventually -- I will! -- but right now I've jumped back down off the wall to catch my breath and get my bearings, because I'm just sick and tired of it and I've got work to do.  I've got an event to cover tonight, in fact.

Fuuuuuuuck.  

In my heart of hearts, I want one-stop shopping.  I do not want all these levels of stuff to deal with -- all these accounts, all these charges, all these steps in order to do something.  I don't want to have an intact blog but an unintact host.  Or I might have those two things, but have forgotten to renew my domain.  Goddamnitalltohell.  If it's not one thing, it's your mother.  I mean "another."  

I'm kind of holding out hope that SquareSpace will get this all figured out soon -- they assure me they are working hard on it -- because I'm liking the looks of what they have to offer, and honestly for this, the simpler the better, though they could eventually turn out to be just another Typepad that, though once perky and shiny in terms of its customer service and ease of use, has degraded so much over time that I have come to this point. Not that I'm cynical or anything. 

It's not my full-time job, this blog and web crap.  I really don't want three or four or five of everything to deal with -- a domain, a blog platform, a host, a photo hosting site.  Too many things to exponentially go wrong, too many accounts, too many passwords to remember, too many steps, too many charges, too much head-banging.  

I just want easy and seamless.  Is that too much to ask?!  Don't bother answering that.  It's simply rhetorical, because I am a realist and a pragmatist.  I know damn well that it is indeed far, far too much to ask. 

Right now I have Chaucer and Neitzsche and an OB/GYN rotation and Kristen Schaal to think about.  I sincerely hope Kristen Schaal is NOT a horse tonight.  Though if she is, at least I'll know what's coming, and the vocab would not be too much of a challenge.  Would that I could just put the steno on auto-pilot, but contrary to popular belief, that is not possible, either. There is a feature called "auto brief" that will be of some help, though.  Sigh

Cocktails and dinner on the lake with friends on a beautiful afternoon and evening which involves no work on my part:  Now, THERE'S an answer that is right in almost every situation. 

I tried to take a photo of the windfarm in the Adirondacks opposite, dead center of the photo, but my camera did not capture it.  No matter -- there was no wind and it was completely still anyway. 

Irreconcilable Differences

This is something about me that you probably already know: In my personal and business dealings I am very loyal, and I can take some crap if I choose to. But in all things, I reach a certain threshold and I am well and truly done.  There comes a straw that breaks this camel's back.  

I can imagine that for some people, this rift with Typepad all seems like much ado about nothing.  How can it possibly be THAT important?  

Well, I've put a lot of time and effort and a lot of my heart and soul into this for the past five and a half years.  I've made some of my most important relationships and done some of the most satisfying things of my life, as a direct result of this blog.  As I've mentioned very recently, in fact, my blog is my favorite habit addiction hobby.  It's not a little thing.  

But anyway.  I believe forward movement is the best medicine for almost all ills. As regards leaving Typepad, I have taken the first step.  I have bought my own domain name.  

Somebody already owns (the chutzpah!) NowNormaKnits.com.  (but type in that address and you get nothing) WTF?  

However, a simpler, easier-to-remember (so perhaps I should say thank you to whomever is squatting at NNK.com?) NormaKnits.com is (or was, until I bought it) available.  

It doesn't mean much yet, because I still have to find a blog host that can transfer everything from my old blog to a new one with a minimum of cranium-bashing-against-a-masonry-surface on my part.  It's not easy. Typepad has, according to this article and this one, deliberately made it nearly impossible to do so.  The best we seem to have available now is to pay someone the equivalent of two years' worth of blog hosting in order to transfer it, or transfer the text only, and then manually transfer each and every image, and manually fix each and every link.

I've blogged almost every day for over five years, and I usually post at least one (and often many) photos in each post, and often include links in my posts. That comes to a bare minimum of 1,500 photos to manually move and links to fix.  I'm just not willing to do that.  I'm also not willing to abandon my archives.  I'm not much of a sentimental person in real life (or so I claim), but the blog means a lot to me and I'm not willing to completely shut the door and walk away.  

I'm not the only one who feels that way.  The LinkedWithin feature that I've added to the blog matches keywords and brings up old entries that are all but forgotten. Some people have expressed annoyance at that. OK, ONE person. But I have enjoyed the nostalgia immensely, and so have other people.  I recently noticed on my daughter's Facebook page that she had linked to the old post about the two kids and the hat in Central Park, saying, "This blast from the past has me in stitches tonight," and one of her old friends from grade school commented, "I forgot how funny your mom was."  Well, just go ahead and warm the cockles of my old frigid heart, will ya please?!  

Blogging used to be fun.  But apparently hobby bloggers are no longer of interest to Typepad -- at least that's the message they are giving us.  In the sage words of one fellow Typepad user yesterday, a certain knitting doctor we know and love, "the answer so far appears to be 'fuck you.'"

Yep.  I agree.  Or even if you don't like off-color words the way I do, you could infer a kinder, gentler, "Oh, you don't like it? Well, a large number of people asked for it. While we appreciate that you may not like it, we made this change which forever alters how you blog without giving you a choice and without letting you know we were going to do it beforehand, and if you don't like it, you can lump it." **

Same diff.  "Fuck you" is just so much more concise.

So after that kind of an answer, breaking up is not all THAT hard to do.  

Now I'm in the process of renting the equivalent of a blog U-Haul and movin' on up.... to the big time.  It might take me a while to make the move since I'm doing all the packing myself, but NormaKnits.com, here I come.

--------------

** I feel compelled to point out that I did apparently receive some special deference because I am a "pro" level blogger.  In the response to Cookie's ticket she pretty much verbatim got the "fuck off" answer.  I, however, pay more per month, so apparently I warrant the courtesy of an extra line thrown in that loosely implies that their engineers are looking into it to see if they can make the experience better. 

I believe this is going to be filed under the category of "Too Little Too Late."  Or "Fuck Off."  You choose.

I Am So Furious At Typepad Right Now I Could Spit

Typepad and I, we may be getting a divorce.  They have made the weirdest change I have ever seen.  All of a sudden, completely out of the blue, now when we get comments emailed to us, the person's email address is changed when we respond.  It is changed to a code that then posts my email response, intended to be sent directly to that person -- as has always been done -- DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC BLOG COMMENTS.  So there are no personal interactions anymore unless I take the onerous step of removing that long weird code, then finding your email address in my address book if I already have it, or copying it and pasting it to the email, and then sending to that email address. Otherwise, everything I say in response to your comments, everybody else reads.  And there is no choice, they say.  It's been done, and it can't be changed back, and there is no "check this box or change this setting if you don't WANT the change."

Well, phooey on that.

I have written about this issue before.  We knit bloggers (or in my case "hardly a knit blogger") do things differently than perhaps a business or political blogger.  We have personal relationships with our readers.  We don't necessarily want everything we say back to our commenters to be for public consumption.  We are ALSO blog readers, in addition to being bloggers.  We don't want to have to go back to blogs all frickin' day to read if the blogger has answered our comments, OR to subscribe to people's blog comments and get reams and reams of emails in our email box of a bunch of comments that mean nothing to us, in addition to the one we left.  This leads to a constant barrage of pointless trivial stimulation.  The world has Twitter for that.  And Facebook. Neither of which I'm a big fan of, because, well, I've got WORK to do, for fucksake. (Doesn't anybody else?!)  And why does everything have to be a carbon copy of everything else, all reduced to a 40-character sound bite?  We make our appointed rounds, reading the blogs we want to during the day, we check in on each other with comments, we move on.  Only rarely do we have the time or desire to go back, until the next day or the next time the person posts.  

After almost six years of using this blog-hosting service and having been a loyal customer to the point of recommending it to others and always trying to be the voice of reason when they made mistakes or had outages, I guess I've reached my limit.  This change was unilaterally sprung on us.  I hate it.  They say that a large number of users requested this service.  Well, I'm not one of them.  Those users are the "blog for work/blog for money" type of bloggers, I'm guessing.  That ain't me.   And you don't just make a change that is as substantial as this, and changes the way a person blogs so dramatically, and institute the change so that one day it's just all of a sudden THERE, with no opt-out option.  

I submitted a help ticket, and this was the response I got, the same form letter that Cookie got when she submitted a complaint:

Hi Norma,

Thanks for the note. We received a large number of requests for this
feature, so the behaviour in TypePad was changed to reflect this.

We appreciate that this is something that does not fit with how you use
TypePad, and we have provided this feedback to our engineers and we are
looking into options for improving the experience.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

Thanks,
Zalary

It's enough to make me want to quit.  

They truly, truly don't get us.  How's about we raise up our loud knitterly voices and let them know that we are a force to be reckoned with?

Why I've Harangued You For Comments

It's official:  The blog is my favorite hobby of all my long list of hobbies.  Of course, it's nice that it can be the outlet and clearinghouse, as it were, for all -- or most, anyway -- of my hobbies and interests.  And you, my dear readers, are important to me.  

But for a while, it appeared that readership was drastically down, commenting was drastically down, and I started to wonder if it was because I had become a terrible, obnoxious bore.  If that is the case, then it's time to hang it up.  That is the last thing I want to be.  Then again, I don't want the pressure -- and know I could never live up to it -- of always being "on," and always being entertaining.  

Of course, I could tell from my blog stats that readership was not REALLY down -- it's just that the hits to the blog were down -- to the tune of 50%! -- since I allowed the full posts to be readable in the feed readers.  That means that of course it's more convenient and faster to read it in the reader, but people were not then clicking through, and not commenting.  I had a little bit of a crisis of confidence over all of that.  I always think I'm not into the popularity thing, but being ignored can shatter the confidence of even the most thick-skinned, I suppose.  

Not really, but really, if that makes any sense.  I knew you were there, but many of you were awfully quiet.  And it's not a good feeling, as some of you delurkers have acknowledged you realized, to feel like one is talking either to oneself or to the mirror, or writing into a vacuum.  One wonders if one has become redundant.

I'm a terrible hypocrite, because my own ability to read and comment on my friends' blogs and new blogs has taken a nose-dive what with all my responsibilities, trying to get enough exercise, keeping up on the studying I am doing, and keeping up with my own blog.  

In addition, in the last couple of years with the blogging every day, I have abandoned the practice of answering every comment like I used to do in the old days.  I just can't do it all.  I read them and relish them -- usually on my BlackBerry whenever I have a minute in my day to check it -- but can't always respond.  So it's a terrible one-way street, and I wish I could do something about that, but I can't.  Well, of course I COULD.  It's all about choices and priority-setting.  Oh, and I do need to get some sleep once in a while.   

So thank you for understanding, and thank you especially to those who have come out of lurkdom to make an effort.  I appreciate it sooooo much.  Of course I don't expect you to comment ALL.THE.TIME, but it is lovely to hear from you on a semi-regular basis.  And for those people who say they don't comment because they can't think of anything clever to say, cleverness in the comments is not required.  A simple, "Hi, I'm here reading because I enjoy your blog" once in a while is very much appreciated, though.  

All right.  Enough of that.  

Lookie:  There hasn't been much time for knitting, but I have started a scarf in the gorgeous tomato-red Blue-Faced Leicester yarn AnnaMarie gave me for my birthday.  

The pattern is the lovely Palindrome, which I like to characterize as the ever-popular Irish Hiking Scarf......

.... only reversible.  I'm pretty sure this one is going to belong to me.  

The poor tweed sweater has not had any progress made on it since we last spoke.  

Speaking of red scarves and me haranguing you (nice segue, hm?), you can start shipping your scarf for the Red Scarf Project starting September 1, which is right around the corner.  The deadline is not 'til December 15, so there's plenty of time for you to finish a scarf or two or three.  Just do it. You'll be glad you did.  

Here's the address:

Orphan Foundation of America 
The Red Scarf Project 
21351 Gentry Drive 
Sterling, VA 20166

Catching Up

Good morning. Sorry I'm late!  I noticed that even in my absence for several days, one of the three feeds in Bloglines has STILL NOT UPDATED.  So there are people out there who still don't know I've updated.  Would you all do me a favor, if you are a Bloglines subscriber?  Would you unsubscribe and then subscribe again?  I've done that with a few blogs I sub to, and it seems to have worked.  I know that many people have just shifted to other feedreaders, and that is fine -- but they, too, are not without their problems, and I for one always seem to end up back with Bloglines.  I really don't know why -- it's just what I started with, I guess.  Anywayyyyyyy.......

Thank you all for the lovely comments recently.  The comments thing is a subject for another post, I guess, so you can understand why it matters.  It might be self-explanatory, but I know how it can somehow sound whiny or demanding to beg for [or as we call it, "whore for"] comments.  We'll talk about it soon, k?  

It's almost 10 a.m., and I am just waking up, though I've been up for several hours.  I don't have any classes today, so I thought it would be an easy day to get caught up.  And then I pondered the list of things that need to get done.  Hm.  It's a bit overwhelming at the moment.  I think a cup of strong coffee is in order.  

I've been perusing a few blogs this morning to catch up on the doings of my bloggy friends.  Yes, I left a few comments, though there is more catching up and more commenting to do later.  Right now I'm going to slap on some sunblock and get out to see what the garden has done in my absence.  I got a bit of a preview of it when I took Jefferies out for a pee early this morning, and it looks a bit daunting.  

I've got billing to do, I've got software issues to figure out (the older computer which houses my billing software is making me nervous, so I've transferred it all onto my new laptop, but I can't figure out how to configure the POP email setup so it will actually send the invoices out.)  Seems like I've done everything right, but the email is not going out.  Freakin' computers.  You just gotta love 'em.  

I want to get some exercise in, and I'm got tons of reading and studying to do to get ready for the new semester.  I've got lots of new jobs booked (yay!), and of course that would happen now that I've taken on another personal challenge that promises to be a bit time-consuming.  More on that later. 

And it's hot (and humid) as Hades.  AND I've noticed that the leaves are already changing.  I'm not the only one that's perimenopausal; apparently Vermont weather is as well.  Bloody hell.  

But we got Abigail all settled in to her new living situation for law school, and she's excited about her new venture.  She's handling the whole New Thing -- living apart from her boyfriend and being back in a situation with roommates and back in the classroom and on a campus dining plan -- with aplomb, and we're very proud of her.

Mr. Jefferies had a photo shoot in his dad's fab new apartment in the Financial District, where he totally fits into the decor.  

 

There Are Worse Habits.

Well, I can't tell you the self-discipline it has taken to stay away from the blog.  I thank all you lovely commenters, by the way, and especially the intrepid elizabeth airhart who keeps on visiting every day even when the blog is at rest, and sweetly says she thinks it's going to take a 12-step program for some of you to stop stopping by.  I'm not offering one!  No way!  And as usual, I am astonished at the number of new names offering up a "I never comment but I love your blog now that you're gone" kind of comment.  Ally said she logged in one morning to see if I would cheer her up with a new entry, and I especially liked the super-duper-confirmed lurkers who wrote emails to the effect of, "If you don't blog, how am I supposed to lurk?!" 

Hey, you: Are ya familiar with that old cranky lady button?  Well, now that I want it, I can't find it anywhere, but this photo will give you a similar idea:

Would it kill you to comment?

---------------------------------

Oh!  Our Terry found it for me:

Heh-heh-heh. 

But though the rest has been nice and the quiet in the email box has been sort of welcome since I have so much else on my mind, I have logged in to begin writing no less than three times, just out of habit.  Habit!  I really mean it!  I'd get logged in, and then I'd say to myself, "Wait a minute!  You're supposed to be on vacation."   Plus, I was starting to think about other things, such as decorating and stuff like that, all of which was making David very nervous about the bank account.  He begged me to get back to the blog.  And besides, I don't tweet.  So how am I going to tell anyone that I'm thinking about going to pick a tomato or thinking about going to the bathroom or wondering what I'm going to make for dinner, or if I should pick out my toe jam if I don't blog?  

So it's a habit, but it must be a good habit, sort of like brushing one's teeth, I guess.  I've had a couple of health exams this week, sort of from stem to stern ifyaknowhwatImean, and all the doctors say that I'm healthier than I've a right to be at my *ahem* age. 50 is the new 30, if I have anything to say about it. 

Well, the cholesterol is still a bit of a bugaboo, but other than that, it seems clear that the blog is good for my health.  Or at least that's the take-home message I'm taking home from all this.  

No, I'm not drunk, though I sound a bit like it, don't I?  High on life, I guess.  

So here ends the blogcation, though writing time will be thin on the ground for the next few days.  We're off to the Big Apple to help Abigail get settled into her law school living situation and make sure she has everything she needs, etc.  And when I return, I expect to write the blog again, and I expect you to comment, damnit!  

Oh, and Mr. Jefferies says hi, too.  He's going with us to New York.  Back to his roots.  But he wants me to tell you he is not going to like being in that carry bag and stuck under the seat of the plane.  That's in case you can pull any strings with the airline.