I have some Paton’s Inca in a beige blend (the same colour that the One Piece Jacket was done in) but I can’t find exactly the sort of pattern that I want to knit, so it’s time to design my first jumper. I’m an information systems major rather than a textiles major, so I decided to apply software engineering principles to designing my jumper.

So, first of all, requirements elicitation. The business requirements of the jumper are;

• The jumper must accentuate my “assets” while downplaying any not-so-desirable attributes
• The jumper must fit, and should have plenty of stretch
• The jumper should be easy to maintain
• The jumper’s cost should be less than $150

Translating the business requirements into functional requirements;

• The jumper will have a v-neck that is 2o cms deeper than the top of my shoulder and shaping will begin 8 cms in from the shoulder. The v-neck accentuates the bust while drawing attention away from the hips and gives room for movement
• The jumper will be knitted in 1 x 1 rib to give shaping and stretch
• The jumper will have slight increase to allow for large bust and decreases for waist, possible increase for hips
• The jumper will have sleeves that finish 10 cm below the elbow (my preferred sleeve length)
• Paton’s Inca is $6 at Lincraft or $5.40 at K-mart (unless I can twist Damo‘s arm to get ACS to offer bulk packs cheaper). Therefore, the pattern must take less than 26 balls of yarn if I buy them at K-mart.

Next: knitting pattern design using functional decomposition

I’ve just installed the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin for WordPress, which means my blog is mobile.
So, does that make it a moblog or a blobile ???

So, if you’re viewing this on a web browser you’re probably wondering what the site actually looks like on a mobile device. I can’t take a picture of it (d’uh!), but it’s basically a plain text list of recent posts – with all the formatting taken out.

I was curious as to how the plugin detects whether the user-agent is mobile. It was straightforward. An array of user agent strings for small browsers (DoCoMo, Wii, Symbian) is created, and if the user agent matches an element of the array, then the plugin generates a mobile-friendly layout.

I was looking forward to Easter when suddenly chills began to run up my spine. Before I knew it, I was running a fever. A couple of days later, and my leg looked like this:

Lovely. OK, so cellulitis is no big deal, get some antibiotics on board and things will be sweet, right?

Not so fast. The antibiotic the guys at the hospital decided to prescribe is apparently pretty harsh on veins. So much so that my vein ‘blew out’, that is, caused a clot in the vein and caused my arm to swell. Wonderful.

Okey doke, so they put a central line in to get the antibiotics in. Problem solved? No. Next, I developed an abcess which had to be removed.

Here’s a shot 10 days after surgery. The term “perfuse pus” and “bucketloads” were used by the docs. Apparently the abcess was the size of a grapefruit. Delicious!

And here’s another shot a few days later:

Every day, the wound is packed with Algisite, to stop it knitting at the top. This allows it to heal from the bottom up.