Pumpkinspun’s Musings

Awesome weekend…. I attended my second Podcamp since July, this one down in Philly.

I guess you can count me in the camp of folks who were happy that more SEO (’Search Engine Optimization’, for the non webbie tech folks) topics were added, and as a full time web developer, I was truly grateful.

On Saturday I attended the SEM on Shoestring Budget session in the morning, presented by Beth Harte and was grateful the conversation that developed during the session, and for the chance to hear what attenders had to add. I heard about a new book, called “Groundswell“, which will be useful to me to add to my conversation with clients as I try and convince them WHY they need to pay attention to social media.

I briefly met Li Evans who had so many interesting things to say about SEO and was appreciative of her input on both the first session of the morning, and her presentation on Social Media Do’s and Don’ts session.

Two sessions on using Twitter, including “Social Media for Business and Being a REAL person” with Annie Heckenberger, and another by Howard Greenstein which was more a general conversation about Twitter. Both were very entertaining sessions as well as informative. Annie, thanks for the candy lipstick!

The Viral Marketing, Strategy, Implementation and Results session with the guys from Pandemic Labs was very interesting, and although I’m not a video person, I learned a lot from it that could be useful to a few clients.

I also had a chance to meet Wil Reynolds and Simon Heseltine in the Small Business Site Clinic session.. where I learned that we’re doing some things right with the sites we design, BUT that there are a bunch of pieces we need to pay more attention to, for natural search engine optimization on the sites we code. And that we need to partner with a few SEO firms who we trust on sites. As a designer, I don’t have time to be a full time SEO expert, and even though I try and keep up on all the changes, I was so glad to meet some SEO experts that I feel I can recommend. Thanks, Wil and Simon!

I was sorry not to be able to attend the Sunday sessions, and wished I could have cloned myself somehow, but with a 5 1/2 hour drive home, it wasn’t in the cards this time out.  I hope to get to meet many of you again….thanks podcampers!

So much more I could comment on.. perhaps in coming days/months, but since I have work to get to, I’ll close with this: Web folks.. do some googling on Podcamps… and get to one near you. They’re not all about podcasting! And artist friends… if you’re the least bit techy, think about going to one of these events. You’ll learn alot, meet many interesting folks, and have a great time.

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This was my 6th Clapotis. I guess I’ve become rather fond of them - easy to knit, they drape just wonderfully, you can choose just about any fiber to make them from, you can make them as wide or narrow as you like. They make great scarves, shawls, wraps. My first 5 were made of Cotton, Rayon or Cotton/rayon blends, most for gifts, the first rayon/silk one was for myself. I decided this year I wanted a new scarf/clapotis that was a tad warmer and lighter. So this winter, while I was purchasing some thrift store sweater to harvest for yarn (yarn harvesting is a GREAT way to get thru quitting smoking!), I found a women’s small sized cropped sweater in 100% cashmere.

The real luck was that the yarn was near DK weight, a rarity in thrift store cashmere sweaters. It was an ugly dusty pink, so after harvesting, I painted it with a kool-aid dye solution, using sponge brushes to get the color just where I wanted. I ended up with 4 skeins of 600yds total yarn, and used blueberry and cherry kool aid packets, about 6 total. In general, when I make my Clapotis’, I use purl stitches rather than stitch markers, to mark the stitches that will be dropped. It’s very visual, and much less fiddly.

You can find the original Clapotis pattern by Kate Gilbert on Knitty.com, as well as some other tips on working with the Clapotis pattern here: http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Clapotis I really like the warmth and lightness of this particular Clapotis. I also twisted the stitches on either side of the dropped stitches in such a way that they mirror each other. When I finally finished, I added some fringe to the short ends of the scarf. It’s lovely yarn…I wish I had more of it!

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It’s been a few weeks, and I can now manage to talk and type about her without my eyes leaking. I promised folks I’d share some memories of Sisu.

Sisu came to us from a farm in East Dover, Vermont. She was delivered to my workplace at Mount Snow, Vermont, in the middle of ski season, late December of 1990, to be a birthday present for my then almost 4 yr old son, Ian.

We brought this little runt of a Siamese applehead kitten home to meet the reigning cat of the household, then, 8 year old black and white Domovaya, who was known for her skills as a major ‘guard cat’ (Domavaya disliked most people except for us). I expected some trouble, but when I let the new kitten out of her carrier, and she met the scowling hissing Domovaya, she stood her ground and growled at her. Put Domovaya right in her place.

In grad school, my ex and I had the opportunity to take a year’s worth of Finnish, as a semester of a non Indo-European language was required in the Slavic Linguistics program. (Note that the Domovaya’s name came from the Russian word ‘Domovoi‘, or ‘house spirit’). Seeing the new tiny kitten’s brave and gutsy behavior to the dominant cat of the household, we decided to name her “Sisu“, a Finnish word of epic proportion and pride.

We loved her sweet, gentle personality and for a while thought we’d not fix her and perhaps breed her, but 1 year of her going into heat and howling every 3 weeks with her butt up in the air was enough to convince us not to. As a 4 yr old, my son once said to a vendor at a show, upon seeing a brochure they had with an image very similar to Sisu and pointing at it, “Dat cat’s in Heeeeeat”. That’s how much he heard us complaining about it!

Sisu continued to live up to her name most of her life. She was bold and spirited and in her younger years, quite the little “Brat Cat“. She loved stealing yarn, and one time when I was warping my new floor loom with a weaving friend, we turned our backs for a moment and she was off running down the hall, dragging an 8 foot warp with 2 women running after her!

Sisu had a lot of other alternative nicknames, as have most of our cats, usually based on personality, behavior and oddities. For a good part of her life, we dubbed her “Barfette” thanks to her delicate tummy and habit of chowing down too fast.

She was also known as: Parrot Cat (she loved perching on the shoulders of her people), Sisu Sweet, Little Lady (she was a very delicate, feminine kitty) and for a good part of her life, Sisu Meat (she was known to practically scream if she smelled any kind of meat, beef, chicken, etc in the room until she got her way). If we were having sausage in the morning.. you might even hear us say to her “Polly want a sausage?”

Sisu’s left us with some wonderful memories and her younger ‘brother’, Stretch (who incidentally has the first English name in our household for a cat) is just beginning to realize he has no one to pick on.

I know I’m leaving out some good stories, so if you have a Sisu story to share, please do..

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