Things have been pretty good, if a little quiet around here. I finished teaching for the spring term last week. I think it went pretty well this time, I felt pretty confident about teaching this time around. Right now, it looks like I'll be resuming in the fall, and probably two classes.

Last week was the Flimp festival and Free Comic Book Day. I went to the museum first and enjoyed walking around seeing which artists were there doing workshops. The sidewalk art was there, as usual, but unfortunately it had rained the previous day and all the artwork wasn't as vibrant as it was originally intended to be, with the exception of a few where artists were touching them up. I ran into Al, a fellow portrait drawing classmate who had a gorgeous, bright image done that he was retouching.

I later hung out during the afternoon at Comics and Trading Cards for Free Comic Book Day. Offered a to do commissions, but only was able to do one. Still, kinda fun and I picked up Trinity.

Things are slow at work. I'm trying to finish up the newsletter for the ASU library and center, but got to wait on some submissions before I can do anything more that's major. I will hopefully get back to work on the next phase of my contract work, once I review what the next phase intails and what the client's comments are for the first few documents.

Other than that, same old same old. Trying not to get too stressed about stuff I can't control, nor about what I can and work on doing what I can. Family is planning a trip to Orlando at the end of the month, first vacation in a while. That'll be fun.

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Not as much as I used to, but here's what I tend to gather up.

Books: got a lot of books, fiction, art instruction, history, nature and biological sciences, a few art of books. Just a lot. I've got a number of boxes filled with stuff from Auburn I haven't brought down and I do plan to put them up so they aren't all in storage. At least two full bookshelves, I'm sure. Three if I include the manga.

Comic books: got a long box and two short, need to get a new one. I need to go through and remove titles that I was never that into or don't like (for example: purge the individual issues of Countdown to Final Crisis; I still want my money back for that one.). I am currently actively trying to collect Metal Men issues, especially since they don't seem to be printing another volume of Showcase Presents to finish it.

Yarn: I've gotten into knitting and I'm pretty good at it. I usually buy yarn for a particular project, but I'm slowly building up a collection of yarns that weren't right for a project and might be good for another. Need to find something to put them in.

Clothing patterns: Mostly period costumes, but a few contemporary patterns. Largely for cosplay, but some are nice to have for clear look at what a clothing article looks like and how's it put together; excellent for wanting to create a costume or outfit for a character.

I really need to make a couple knitting icons.

Anywho, been working on that Natsu scarf for lycorne, and we decided to go with a very basic pattern that's called a basket weave. It makes the squares very easy to see whereas the pieced together pieces weren't going to be so clear. Below is the progress I have so far, which is currently about 42in and just wraps around. I think 60in. will be enough to get the right length, but may go as far as 70. We'll see.

I've been playing around a little this week making some quick sets of panels to make test swatches. The thing with the scarf is there's no real indication of what Natsu's scarf would look like in real life, so the immediate challenge is to guess how it would go together. I'm guessing the best way to get the look is to connect panels made of garter stitches, and that will get the grid like look. Below are samples made from top: a loose, fuzzy bulky yarn, below: worsted yarn.

Those familiar with Fairy Tail and Natsu's scarf, which one looks better? I'll do a few more test swatches and post them later for a final comparison before moving on to the actual scarf.

I got contacted by my hosting company about the recent hack to my website. It turns out they took advantage of a security hole from my Wordpress account and got in that way. Yeah, there's a reason they have all those frequent updates and patches. I know I've been pretty lax about updating my Wordpress versions because I don't use it all that much. Yeah, not going to be so lax again.

I did get a placeholder image and new index page up to replace that annoying hacker's page. I will upload my current portfolio site to its directory tomorrow. After that, I need to work on updating but my work portfolio site and creating a personal/creative website, and what I want to do with both. I've been putting that aspect off for a while.

In other news, I went and got some materials for my next knitting project. I was on Twitter and mentioned an interest in figuring out exactly what Natsu's scarf from Fairy Tail looked like, and lycorne expressed interest in it. Right now, I'm taking two initial trial steps before going into the full scarf project. First, to figure out the best stitches to use and how the panels would look together. I'll be using some leftover yarn to see how that goes first. The second step is to see which yarn will work best. From what I can tell, Natsu's scarf is pretty bulky looking, so I'm tempted to go with heavier or thicker yarns, but if I go too big it might not look right. That's what the below picture is of, a sampling of white yarns that should work well, ranging from worsted to super bulky. I'll start testing after I finish the blanket.