Memorial Day is one of the few days of the year that the IT community tends to take as a holiday, so I'm taking today off -- at least mostly.

I have to get ready for my class tomorrow, and I'm still in the mood to play wiht my WordPress sites after WordCamp, not to mention that article I promised by the end of the week -- last week.

So there may be some work done. And there will no doubt be cooking. However, I also plan to take some time off.

#2 daughter and I went to the conference yesterday, briefly, and learned what I wanted to learn on that day. We took off before the cookout. I texted The Computer Guy later and asked whether we were missing lots of good information, and he was noncommital, so we didn't go back.

Everyone but me went off to celebrations later, so I did work last night. I caught up the Aussies and played with the WP sites, mostly.

I had all my kids home this weekend, and my daughters and I went to a conference. A lot of the attendees were friends and colleagues. Then this morning we went and sang in church before heading back to the conference.

The three experiences reminded me how fortunate I am to have such great family and friends, such wonderful people to work with, and such a lot of overlap among those groups.

Count your blessings.

I went on a hike yesterday with CD, though it ended up being more of a walk. A long walk, though, and very enjoyable, though I think I talked her ear off. I've been doing some exciting projects lately. At least I find them exciting.
 
CD also brought me a large box of sewing patterns. She's the same one who brought me a couple of large boxes of fabric last month. Clearly, if I ever complete SWAP part 1, I will have to move on to SWAP part 2.

Some of the patterns I plan to pass along to #2 daughter. This one, for example. I think the little top and skirt would look very cute on her. The culottes are of course a dreadful mistake on anyone, and were a dreadful mistake even when they were in style. I'm not sure where they were going with the lab coat look, either.

But the top and skirt should be very cute.

There are also a couple of designs from Hot Patterns -- the Weekender wrap dress and the Butterfly Top and wrap skirt -- plus a couple of suits and a nice big coat for the winter. These patterns are in small sizes and more suited to her young, dramatic style.

Also, the pattern shown at left, which should be nice for her dance classes. She's taking salsa now, and plans to move on to Western Swing.

I signed up for Photoshop, myself -- an online summer class. I think I spend too much time trying to figure it out myself, and might as well just learn it. The instructor is the same one from whom I took html last summer. The class was called "web design," but mostly it was just html.

I didn't feel that the instructor knew enough about modern web design, and I found the class frustrating. However, I have the impression that she's hot stuff with Photoshop. I guess I'll find out.

I also start teaching my summer class on Tuesday. I was hoping to complete all The Computer Guy's websites and the 7 assignments for the Kennedy Center before beginning that class, but that may not be a realistic goal. I've done the websites, actually, but I still have two assignments for the arts center, and a magazine editor has asked me to do several articles for the June issue.

June, in case you've lost track, starts on Tuesday.

And I'm going to WordCamp this weekend with my girls, who are arriving tonight. So I am thinking that I may just do what I can this morning and have a long weekend. If I clean house and buy groceries this afternoon, I can enjoy the long weekend with my family -- Memorial Day being one of the two IT holidays each year, I've learned.

Then I can start June just slightly behind.

Here is what I'm knitting. Not, as has been suggested, human brains, but Endless Summer Connemara cotton.

The pattern is Flying Diagonals, from Lacy Little Knits. I started this pattern a long time ago in a laceweight and discovered that the title's word "lacy" is correct -- these are lacy rather than lace, and laceweight won't work. In fact, Connemara is often listed as worsted weight, though I think it's closer to sport.

In any case, I tried and failed with the laceweight and set the project aside. I made Oat couture's Bijoux Blouse from this Connemara, but rarely wore it. So I frogged the Bijoux Blouse and am making the Flying Diagonals cardi instead. I think the additional structure will be better for this yarn.

The other thing I worked on yesterday is this little purse.

I am such a bad photographer.

Anyway, the yellow one is a storebought bag . It has a top band and pleats. For some reason, I really like pleated bags. Also pleated shoes. Pleated hats, even, if it comes to that.

So I'm making much the same bag, though slightly larger, from a print ultrasuede given to me in the collection of hand-me-down fabrics. I've got the pockets on the lining and the outside sewn together. At this point, I'm supposed to put in a zipper. I am, however, baffled. There's the outside, the lining, and then two sets of facings. Somewhere in the putting together of all these pieces I'm supposed to insert a zipper. I can't figure it out.

I have therefore put the little bag with the jacket. When I have time -- and when they've had a chance to think about their behavior and repent -- I'll finish these two things up.

In May of 2008, the first month in which I was self-employed (or an unemployed person working a lot, which was sort of how I thought of it at the time), I earned $1008.02. The following month I learned to invoice people, and nearly tripled that. I don't know how much my business will earn this May, but I've already paid other people more than that amount.

This is a reminder to myself that I am not, by any standard, an unemployed person who has to work every minute because who knows? maybe no one will ever hire me again, especially if their job doesn't get done in two days.

I'm not rich, my business is still a very small one, and most of my personal income goes to tuition for my boys. However, after two years, I think I can say with confidence that my business is established. The days when it made sense to work constantly in order to establish the business are past. For the two-year anniversary of my unemployment, if not my business, I'm putting some energy into the other aspects of my life.

I've been making an effort to  lead a more normal life. Of course, I've been doing that for some time. In fact, I think that a normal life has been a goal of mine for... decades. I'd announce in my xanga that my life was back to normal and revel in the fact for a while, and then something happens and life is not normal for a while, and then the cycle begins again.

"A normal life" is a fairly lame goal. Granted, my definition of "a normal life" is something like "a perfect life," but still...

So anyway, I've been cooking proper meals (I offer you evidence above), and doing creative things (see knitting photo as proof) and hanging out with friends, and reading novels.

I've solidified a morning routine that involves tidying up the house, spending 30 minutes with Wii Fit, and getting dressed before getting to the computer.

I plan to get an evening routine in order -- one that involves taking a walk with the dogs (and my husband, if he'll join me) and cooking and eating dinner before leaving for my various evening events.

It's possible that I've said all this before, and backslidden. However, there is an old saying: when you turn over a new leaf, it doesn't matter how many pages you've already filled.

Those of you who have always thought that turning over a new leaf was some kind of plant metaphor will have to think about that one a little bit.

It is Geek Pride Day.

I don't like that word and rarely use it. However, I have just spent 13 hours at a computer, and I spent many of those hours engaging with html code, so let's be honest here: I might as well celebrate Geek Pride Day.

The rest of the hours were all about a) developing Web 2.0 support for music history podcasts, b) making websites about lawn care and jewelry that the search engines will love, and c) writing newsletters about software.

So I might as well embrace my inner geek, and indeed acknowledge my professional geekhood.

Happy Geek Pride day to you!

Until yesterday I had this great jungle of roses. It needed pruning, certainly. I had been suggesting to my husband that he prune it for months before it burst into bloom.

Recently, though, I've been reveling in it. I had breakfast at the table you can barely see through the window, enjoying the scent of the flowers as I sipped my tea,

In the evenings, I sat out on the patio, breathing in the spicy fragrance. There were hundreds or buds and blossoms nodding their pretty heads.

Even the cat liked them, as you can see.

Yesterday, my husband chopped them all down and threw them away.

He may have intend to prune them, but when I say "prune" I mean cutting out the dead wood and shaping the plant so it will be healthy and happy.

I would call this butchery.

I don't know what was in his mind. I was very upset, though.

I had also suggested to my husband and to my sons, both strapping lads with lots of muscles and plenty of free time, that they dig up the garden while there was still time to plant some vegetables.

All three of them ignored my suggestion.

So yesterday, once my husband had removed the rose jungle, ha had lots of open space in which he could plant vegetables. Did he dig up the garden?

No.

He planted a bunch of tomato plants in pots.
He lined the random pots up along the patio. He intends to set them all onto the un-dug, weed-filled dirt of the garden.  

This will give us a Plain of Jars effect by the horribly tortured remnants of the roses.

I was really pretty upset by this.

I'm trying to be nice about it. I'm glad we'll have tomatoes, and I guess there are weirder things to do on a patio than this.

Sigh.

The roses are looking very beautiful -- crimson Falstaff and the faint pink of New Dawn. We're going to plant some tomatoes today to keep them company. We also have a nice crop of mint and unfortunately some poison ivy as well.

This may be it for the garden this year.

I've been out having fun most weekends lately, and some weekdays as well, and we plan to go to Wordcamp next weekend, so it's been nice having a weekend at home.

I finished the Prudence blouse. It's quite flowing and poufy, but pretty and easy to make. 

I even succeeded with the buttonholes. This fabric is one that CD gave to me. I would not have looked at it in the fabric store, but I like it. That random opportunity for serendipitous discovery is what makes me accept most recommendations from Netflix, accept book club books, and otherwise remain open to chance suggestions.

It's probably why I like to take classes, too. It's so easy nowadays to watch and hear and learn and see only what we choose. How can we expect any surprises that way?

My current SWAP is being made almost entirely with hand-me-down fabrics, so it is giving me many random opportunities.

It's also coming together quite well. I not only finished the blouse, but also sewed up the major  seams for the beige linen pants. I've completed two other tops, and the jacket --

Ah,yes, the jacket. It's at the point where I should do the buttonhole and the topstitching. What this mean to me is that I now have the chance to ruin it completely,

Not only does this color work well with all the other pieces of the SWAP, but it's a very good color for me. This is a good style for me, too, and I put it together thus far without any major problems or errors.

It's a really nice,  heavy linen. I've sewn my antique buttons onto it.

All it would take is one messed up buttonhole and some unsuccessful topstitching to move it from success to failure. I could, it's true, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here very easily.

So what am I doing about that? I'm letting it sit around on a hanger, doing nothing.

Clearly, it's doing me no good as it is. Not jumping in and completing it is in that way just as bad as completing it badly.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I'll think about it if there are any boring bits at church today.

The horrible dog has started crying again. He began at about 3:00 this morning. I got up at 3:30 and let him out and then again at 4:30 and yelled at him, and I gave up at 5:30 and got up for good.

This meant that I was able to do the grocery shopping quite early and back sweet rolls for breakfast and get on with my sewing. It also means that I am tired and grumpy.

Some people have sympathy, I know, for the dog. They figure that when he cries, it is sad for him, and means something about his emotional or physical well-being that ought to make us concerned about him. I figure he is lucky we haven't given him away by now to some other family of sounder sleepers.

So I've now finished my first week off between classes. The week off coincided with an assignment to do seven documents from the Kennedy Center and five websites from The Computer Guy, plus a couple of websites my company is doing and my normal stuff.

There is therefore really no sense in which it was a week off.

I have, therefore, not gotten much sewing done.

However, I think I'll have some sewing time this weekend. And I've just spent an hour out by the roses with a book.

It's been a fun, productive week. I'm tired, though.