Sometimes, one gets a little obsessed

Design and construction. You must understand how to build it, come up with a design that fits your parameters, and then go. It can be a piece of clothing, or a house, or a beaded flower, or software. It doesn't matter. You need to see the vision and understand how it needs to be built first. Then, you can pass go and collect $200.

I've often times complained about a lack of talent in the 2D arts. I can't draw. I have no interest in flat peyote stitch. But you've all see the necklaces and flowers I'll design and make.

For me, it never really seems to be a slow understanding. When it clicks, it clicks and the light bulb turns on bright. That happened this week for me with the OS Commerce software I use on the shopping cart for the flower patterns and the use of CSS. CSS = Cascading Style Sheets.

I've known of this website for a long time. It's called Zen Garden. It's really quite amazing if you go in and dig around. The concept behind it is simple. You have a basic html page, with each section enclosed in a div with an identifier. Using a style sheet and some artistic talent, you can rearrange that page to your heart's desire. It's a call to graphic artists out in the world to learn to use style sheets to really make the technology work for you. You're no longer hardcoding. Today you feel happy, so we'll plug in the happy style sheet. Tomorrow, you feel like crap and you plug in the dark and dreary style sheet. The presentation is different but the contents is the same. We now return to the software model of model/view/controller.

Wow...I'm really having a moment here. I think I need to talk to some computer people a little more. Anyways, go check out Zen Garden. It's really amazing.

With the inspiration and the light bulb in the on position, I started the first step in the makeover of the websites at Judy Yiu Designs. The shop is based on a preexisting template. I hope to make the main website something that is modifiable with CSS, but that will take a little longer as I try to figure out what I want it to look like, and study the various Zen Garden examples some more.

well

A lot of beading, some blogging, even a little bit of knitting, and I even did some updates! I cleaned up judyyiudesigns.com just a little bit. At least right now, it's something I think I can work with...so, it's good. It was a refresher course on CSS.

Update

It's been an ... exciting ... week as I argued and fought with my computer. I had bought another harddrive and managed to reinstall windows but that was it. I didn't have the right drivers for the hardware I had in my computer and I didn't know what WAS in it. Thankfully, I managed to find the order confirmation from when I bought it and managed to figure out the make/model of the graphics card and the network card. Then, a little more digging led me to the sound card and the driver for the touch pad. Set up on this thing is almost back to normal but I've got the drivers on an external drive if I need them and I requested the recovery disc from Dell. For future reference, first thing to do when you buy a new computer is to burn the recovery disc.

In other news...

I've done some beading



And I've decided to stop work on Gothic Spire. I made the smallest size and see how wide I can make that cuff? See how I can't get it over the heel? Also, the wrap stitches were driving me nuts!



So while I looked for a next project, I knitted another few rows on the half hex Spider Shawl from VLT. I really want to make the Myrtle Leaf Shawl but I'm only allowing myself one project from VLT on the needles at once.




I also got my next shipment from the STR club and promptly wound up the yarn. I like this pattern and like the option for knee highs :-)



I did start casting on for a summer top using Classic Elite Provence (100% cotton). I finished the front last night and have cast on for the back. I'm taking a little break because my left hand is a little tired and I don't want to strain it.

MD SHEEP AND WOOL NEXT WEEKEND!!!!

Knitting software

So, I've been looking for some sort of an html editor that is designed more towards programmers and crazies who actually want to write their own html, and not of the WYSIWYG variety. Those drive me nuts. I think I found a nice little editor in jEdit that is about 1 step above Notepad which is what I'm currently coding in. For the record, I hate FrontPage. I can't stand it. And like any other Microsoft product that you write code in, it adds in this extra crap.
I found jEdit over at sourceforge.net which is mainly a repository of open source applications. And as I was surfing around to see what sorts of random pieces of software there were out there, I wondered if there was another insane knitter out there who had started an open source piece of software to design knitted garments. The answer was no.
So now I"m wondering...what would it take to start an open source knit design software? I don't know if I quite have the capabilities to do it since then, it would become my third job (job 1: software developer. job 2: crafty beady lady) and I really don't need to have 2 jobs that overlap so much. Hmm...ponder ponder.