The Kiwi Invasion

Many of you already know this, but James (Fibre Alive blog) from New Zealand will be coming to the states and visiting with me this coming weekend.

Schedule of Events
James arrives from New York City at 7:30 PM on Friday evening and will have a quiet dinner at our home (if he hasn't already eaten). After that, we're looking at the following tentative schedule, in case anyone would like to meet with James while he's here.

Saturday
Morning - Gazebo Yarns - New Hope, PA

Late Morning - Woolly Lamb - Pennington, NJ

Lunch - H.I.Rib Company - Pennington, NJ

Afternoon - Pins & Needles - Princeton, NJ

Late Afternoon - Either walking around Princeton campus - Princeton, NJ

Sunday

Afternoon - Twist Knitting & Spinning - New Hope, PA

Current Knitting
This week, I've put down the crochet tablecloth, and focused my work on the Alpaca Jacket.



Fortunately, I've re-couped some of the lost knitting I had to rip out, but I'm much happier with the more muted color differentiation. This picture reflects approximately 13 inches of the back of the jacket.

New Magazine
I picked up the new Interweave Knits this past weekend, and for one reason only. Marilyn has two articles in it, and I wanted to support her.



I'm hopeful that the choice of having Marilyn write some articles for them is a sign that the magazine will get better and better. It really needs to.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding Googling for answers, Marilyn writes, "For those who are truly lazy, get the Google Toolbar. That way, you don't have to favorite it or even type in the URL. You can Google right from it."

I love this tool, and can't imagine why most folks don't use it. Not only will it allow you to do a search from anywhere, it will also allow you to search the resulting web pages for your search terms. It's a great tool.

Regarding the same topic, Ann writes "But in defense of the 'neps' question, it's one of those things where if you didn't know what it is, Googling won't help. Google on "neps" and you get unhelpful answers in the first several results pages. It's not until half way down the 3rd page that you get the relevant answer. It's something that all search engines are working on, but it requires contextual references, which people are leery of."

In some cases, I would agree with Ann, but not this time. The context of using the word 'neps' in my blog entry was clearly associated with carding wool. If a reader tried googling for 'neps' and got a lot of confusion, they should probably realize it required an additional search term or two, such as 'definition neps carding wool,' which would have narrowed down the search results.

I also want to say I was glad that Evelyn didn't take offense to the public critique, even though she had tried to Google.