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After the exams wound down, I found time to work on Dana-mee’s belt again. Last Sunday was flower-stitching time, during which I changed my mind about using 6 colors and scrapped the red and pink flowers.

Sorry about the shot quality — my hand was a tad shaky and it WAS a bit dark in the room.

In the wee hours of this morning, I stitched on the pearl beads. Lo, it is finished!

And I thought I’d never see the end of it.

Now, on to the Christmas projects! No, they are not doilies. Also, photos won’t be visible here until after they are distributed to the recipients. I’ll be posting them up on Ravelry instead, for fellow crochet buffs’ eyes only.

Diana’s belt is fully crocheted. However, as I foresaw, it’s been hard to select colors for the flowers to be attached. It doesn’t help that I’m not fond of violet. After much deliberation, and with many and conflicting suggestions from the girls, I will be using 6 instead of just 3 colors:

The green, white and pink flowers are bigger than the ones used in the original pattern, but not the same size as the ones I made for Daren’s belt. All the smaller flowers will be discarded in favor of this size. Unfortunately, the belt will have to wait till after the first trimestral exams, along with the shawl I’m currently contemplating — it’s time to steel myself and prepare yet another batch of reviewers for the Little One. (A.P. and Filipino again — argh!)

Started on this about two hours ago. Tried doing just 2 scallops instead of the 3 called for in the original pattern, but somehow it didn’t seem right for Diana, so I frogged everything and started over with 3 scallops containing fewer stitches.

So far, so good. I wish she had picked a brighter color for her belt, but we’ll see how this turns out.

At last, I present the finished Cintura con Fiorellini:

Yes, I went with the pearl beads. No, I didn’t sew additional flowers on the belt ties; they weren’t needed. Daren was very happy with the results.

Now the Little One is clamoring for one of her own. It will have to be thinner, probably 2 scallops wide instead of the original 3. I’ve actually made a black one of this width for myself (without flowers as yet).

I took the girls to Maning’s in Farmers Plaza so Diana could choose her shade of violet. The salesgirls were all agog over Daren’s belt. I don’t blame them one bit. They suggested that I enter it in a competition sponsored by Cannon threads. Unfortunately, (1) this isn’t my original design, and (2) I used Monaco thread. LOL.

For months now we’ve been receiving calls at home from a bunch of strangers — all collection agents, all looking for someone named Jennylyn Feria. It’s getting really annoying. These imbeciles must think we’re hiding her in our apartment. We’ve tried niceness (”Sorry, there’s no one here by that name”), curtness (”No such person here”) and even bluntness (”What the hell is wrong with you people? We keep telling you, there’s no Jennylyn Feria here!”). None of it has worked.

A few minutes ago I talked to Daren, who was home early after classes were cancelled, and she reported that yet another agent had called. She gave them the standard (curt) reply and put the phone down. The bitch on the other end then called back, told Daren “You have no manners!” then hung up.

Look who’s talking.

Hey, you inconsiderate and pestiferous morons calling yourselves collectors: No matter how many times you disturb us with your unwarranted and illegal phone harassment, there is not, never has been, and never will be a Jennylyn Feria in our home. So you and your incessant calls can go to blazes. As for having no manners, well, I’m sure you “agents” know all about that, don’t you?

And as for you, Jennylyn Feria or whoever the F you really are, if I ever get my hands on you, I will take great pleasure in wringing your lying little neck.

A thousand curses on this pack of fools.

Daren can’t wait to wear this.

Just need to find some nice beads or buttons for the flower centers, and possibly also attach some flowers to the ends of the belt ties. Speaking of which, I didn’t know how to make cables for the belt ties and tack them on, so I just looped the tie threads through the end scallops and made three separate braids.

This is fun.

I finished the Rose of Erin doily last August 5, in the office right after a hurried lunch. All but the weaving in (easily done, but boring) and the blocking (no idea how to do it, may just ask Mom to iron it for me).

Am now working on a Cintura con Fiorellini for Daren. This is what it looked like when I started last Thursday:

Here’s what it looks like now:

I made the smaller flowers by following the pattern exactly, but they seemed a bit too small, so I made some bigger ones (far right).

And here’s one of my fingerless gloves, the pattern for which resides somewhere in my cluttered brain:

Daren wants me to make her another pair, in green.

I also did a couple of Fancy Filigree Bookmarks for the girls, which unfortunately I failed to take photos of only one of which is shown below (the red one being Mom’s):

I know, I know, it’s not in character. But this is really fun.

Meanwhile, Daren and Diana are having some fun of their own, reading books. Daren went through my old Nancy Drew books, and brought about a dozen volumes home. She got Inkheart for her birthday, and she finished it in a week. Then she asked for (and got) Swordbird, which only lasted a couple of days. On the other hand, Diana decided to read Stardust, which was a big surprise. She’s actually made it to Victoria Forester telling Tristran to go get her the fallen star. Now you know why I had to make them some bookmarks.

Here’s a recent photo of them doing yoga. Or something.

Following is an email I wrote to feedback@cuil.com a few hours ago, and which I’m posting here for archive purposes:

Good morning,

I learned about Cuil.com and was curious to see if it had indexed my site (stannum.net). After entering “stannum.net” in the search box, I found that the site had indeed been indexed; however, the following unrelated image was displayed in the search results:

http://www.cuilimg.com/imgsrv?i=02030e:1304022976150439 (please see attached image file, saved from the search results)

The above image was displayed together with the following link to my site:

http://www.stannum.net/index.php/archives/2003/08/03/
party-on-daren/

I feel this is inappropriate, since the entry on my site refers to my daughter’s 7th birthday party while the image shows the text (edit: deleted to avoid further unwanted association). Where did the image come from, and could someone please remove it from association with my journal entry?

Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon regarding this matter.

I won’t be attaching a copy of the image itself in this entry. Otherwise, Cuil might reply with “What do you mean it’s unrelated? It’s one of your site files!”

Here’s a screenshot instead: (click to enlarge)

It’s idiotic that the Cuil search engine can just plaster random images together with search results. That never happened with Google.

UPDATE at 12:14PM: Here I was trying not to be harsh, when other people’s searches yielded images unsafe for work!

How to Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch (go look at the link to TheRegister’s article, if you dare)

TARFU, at the very least. LOL.

I’ve finished the center. In the fourth round after the rosettes, I ended up with 76, not 75 loops, so only had to increase by 4 loops in the sixth (pre-pinwheel) round. (Yes, I know most people aren’t going to understand this unless they’re familiar with the pattern. No, it’s not important, unless you mean to do your own Rose of Erin.)

Now for the outer pinwheel motifs. Don’t know how much more yarn I’ll be needing, but I stopped by the thread stall in Farmers Market this morning to get another ball of Monaco B10 (Ecru), just in case.

Also, thanks to Ravelry for sending my invite!