Knitting Time!

With chills in the air and schools starting this week signaling the beginning of a new season, comes the perfect time to start knitting and crocheting, enjoying your time knitting/crocheting something new and in something that you can soon start using :).

Yesterday, I started my second knitting project (third total, both knitting and crocheting without counting the small appliques I created for my friends that helped me just get used to holding needles and knowing how to use them - some of the things I did were a heart, angels, a snowman, and a Christmas stocking).

My first was a scarf I did for myself using a pattern from ravelry.com (picture on the right) and for which I got the yarn and needles that would work with the pattern myself and running the risk of not getting the same exact materials since it's hard to get them where I live. I used this pattern, in addition to loving the look of it, to learn knitting in cables which was my first time to do it. I haven't worked on knitting a lot before that project, actually it's really my first one and I was so thrilled seeing it coming along and growing as I continued working on it.

And now my second project is a bag to go with it ... I'm also planning on working on the gloves as soon as I finish the bag to complete the whole set ;).

I got the bag pattern from drops website - a website I love so much with its girly and elegant free patterns - and by examining the materials used, I tried my best to get the closest I can.

The new thing to learn for this pattern is using circular needles which was a first for me to hear about them for I have always known only the straight ones, and by all means, the best way to learn a new thing for me is to learn hands-on - enjoying the production of something new while learning how to do it, feels awesome and rewarding :D.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Already starting my third row, hope it goes well without complications or mistakes.

Let's see how long it will take me ;)

Wordpress vs Blogger Non-Technical Comparison

Now this is not a tech-savvy comparison between WordPress and Blogger. It's a simple comparison from the perspective of a pretty normal person (although I work in the career of websites/systems development :)) who decided to make usage of Blogger - since it's free and already easily accessed through my Google account, and then thought of trying out WordPress (the free version) to decide which will meet their needs and which to continue using. Thus, hence a really simple table with the pros and cons of each that I see:

The Power of Focus: 2. Exercises and Plans To Execute

Since this was a very big and rich book, and because there were two different aspects of it that interested me and I started writing about them; I divided the full into two separate ones. The first was about the inspirational quotes I liked in the book, and the second (the one at hand), is about the exercises, checklists and plans to perform an do to achieve that this book is all about. This is like a gathered summary as a guideline to get more focused.

We start with the Successful Habits Formula:

The Power of Focus: 1. Inspirational and Motivational Quotes

So the new self development - or life skills or whatever you call it - book on my currently-reading shelf is the Power of Focus for Jack Canfield.

From the first chapter reading, it all sound very familiar to me, things I've already read in the How to Control Your Mind at Will, but not in that scientific way as the latter. It's got a lot of nice quotes summarizing the main points of it in a very concentrated and to the point way, making it easy to memorize and understand.

Here are some some of the main points and the quotes that I liked: