I really dislike Microsoft at the moment (I’d use the word hate, but that would make me seem petty and juvenile).
The blog loads perfectly in Mozilla, Firefox and Opera, but the sidebar overlaps content in Internet Explorer 5.x and probably 6.x due to a IE bug. I have reports that it works with 7.x, but I only have access to whatever was available in Win98SE.
At the moment, it appears that my weblog loads correctly – without overlap. Something about the ‘About Me’ block seems to have been causing problems and has been removed.
I’d appreciate hearing from those of you had have reported problems and whether the overlap is gone on your browsers.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Photos from Tinian during WW2
I’ll make no comment on this Memorial Day, other than to ask everyone to remember those who served and gave all they had to give, then and now.
Popularity: 9% [?]
I know everyone has been waiting eagerly to click on those little category links and now you can. No more Page Not Found errors
Now if I can just fix the sidebar/IE issue.
Popularity: 22% [?]
The weather in Northwest Oregon has been horrible this past week+. Rain, rain, and more rain. Kind of disappointing after the previous weeks of warm, clear and sunny weather. There is a good side though. Not much need for watering the nursery plants outdoors.
Feather and Fan shawl is still progressing slowly, but I’m getting time each morning to work on it. Starting row 125 and 840 stitches around. I’m thinking about ways I can show something besides a scrunched up ball of knitted fabric. Maybe more later.
Work..Yesterday was my first day off after six straight days of work and five closes. We’re probably going to be shorthanded again the next couple of weeks as one of our counter ladies is about to be fired. She’s trying to cause troubles by spreading gossip about various people on the crew and in particular our main lead, Myssie. She told me in confidence that Myssie was doing a lot of complaining about my work behind my back and of course I asked Myssie about it the next day. The gossip was untrue, of course, and she went to the owner the next morning. Owner is not happy and I expect it came to a head Friday afternoon when gossiper showed up for work. I’ll probably find out the results this evening, as I’m scheduled to close tonight.
And I love this time of the year (when it’s not raining)… So many things growing and blooming and my camera and I are constantly searching out something new.
Primula auricula ‘Vulcan’
One of the showier of my small collection of Primulas. This was shot about a week ago and already the blossoms have faded and disappeared.
Popularity: 40% [?]
First.. Categories is broken – Don’t click on those little links under posts, like Plants or Other Stuff. You’ll get a “Page Not Found” error. Sigh.. Working on it..
We had a little episode with my old man Jake today. He’ll be 18 the middle of June and has really started to show his age. This afternoon while doing our weekly house cleaning, we were herding cats from one end of the house to the other and he nearly collapsed on us. He was knocked over in the rush and for a couple of minutes he just lay there with his legs stretched out and his toes spread. When I finally got him to his feet he was very unsteady and it took many minutes before he could walk steadily. He seems fine tonight, but I’m going to have to start being a bit more gentle and easy around him.
Peonies.. Did I mention that my Peonies are starting to bloom? 
I purchased Paeonia peregrina as a seedling three years ago and this is it’s first year of flowering. Another species Peony, native to Italy, the Balkan peninsula, southern Romania, and central Turkey. Linked to larger photo.
Popularity: 20% [?]
It’s 15 minutes before midnight and I’m home after a busy night cooking pizzas.
A group of 50-60 had reserved an area for a party and only managed to pre-order their pizzas an hour before they were expected to show up. Three of us in the kitchen tonight were able to get the 15 large pizzas pre-made and staged for the oven and we were feeling really good. 10 minutes before they were expected the first ones go into the oven and emerged just as the first folks arrived. Perfect… Unfortunately, some of them turned out to be assholes and made life miserable for the ladies up front. Just when we were feeling the sorriest for ourselves, the manager for the group closes out the tab at over $400 (including pizzas and beer) and adds on an $80 tip. Kitchen doesn’t usually share counter tips, but tonight we split it five ways giving each of us a bit over $16. Almost makes it worth the extra work.. 
This past week I found I had had another pay raise (now up to $9/hour) and had been given the title of ‘Shift Lead’. Really important position. I get to decide who goes home early if the night is slow and who stays later if the night is busy.
Feather and Fan shawl still has progress. Current at about 744 stitches/round, I’m able to work two rounds of straight stitch per day and usually only a single round when I work pattern rows..
Popularity: 10% [?]
I’ve been dragging the Feather and Fan shawl with me today, out on a couple of errands and have managed to work nearly 2 complete rounds. Progress will continue to be slow, but I’m going to keep plugging away.
Nora Barlow Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Nora Barlow’).
This has been my favorite of all the spurless Columbines. Cultivated for over 200 years, I forget how nice this little flower is until I walk into the garden each spring and see it’s prettly little pink and cream and green flowers. Last picture linked to a full sized shot.
Popularity: 17% [?]
I’ve been using Bloglines for quite some time and decided to search this morning and see if they had anyone subscribed to the new Wordpress feeds. The search also brought up the URLs to the old MovableType site (http://www.gaiser.org/knitblog/index.rdf, …/index.atom and …/index.xml). These are now all invalid, as WordPress creates the feeds dynamically and Bloglines is marking them all with ‘Feed Error’ warnings.
If anyone intends on using Bloglines or any other aggregator, the correct address for the feeds is now http://www.gaiser.org/knitblog/?feed=atom, …/?feed=rss2 or ../?feed=xml.
Oh… And for the time being nearly all searches on Google will return bogus URLs also. Hopefully, in the sometime near future, Google will have spidered the new site and the searches will become valid again. The search box on the left (or down below if you’re using IE) works pretty well and everything in the MT database exists here.
Popularity: 23% [?]
First.. There seems to be a bug in IE 5.something and 6.something that doesn’t render valid Cascading Style Sheets correctly, which means the side bar gets pushed to the bottom of the page. I originally thought it might be the 45 XHTML errors that were on the page, but I’ve managed to correct them all and the page validates cleanly now. As the theme author’s page views correctly in both IE 5.x and 6.x, it’s still something I’m doing. I’m working on it, though it’s not one of my high priorities. If you want to see how it’s supposed to look you can download free copies of Firefox or Opera.
Next.. Molly Bee asked about pictures of the Feather and Fan circular shawl. 
It’s getting pretty scrunched on the two circular needles I’m working on and it’s not very interesting right now. Currently on row 114.
Finally.. About 4 years ago, Eileen planted a Japanese Wisteria. 
It’s blooming for the first time this year. She was close to ripping it out, but I’m glad she held off. It reminds me of the Wisterias you see in old Japanese block prints.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Work continues on the Feather and Fan circular shawl. At nearly 700 stitches per round, I’m only getting a single round done in the time I’ve set aside for myself in morning. Still it’s been considerably more than has been accomplished in the months past. And I’m enjoying the knitting again. That’s good.
My Peonies are starting to blossom. 
and a new one for me this year is Paeonia veitchii, a species peony native to China in the provinces of Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Qunghai. Blossoms are only about 4 inches across, nothing like the big blossoms of modern hybrids, but the lack of size is made up by the large number of open flowers.
Popularity: 15% [?]
