Spincerely yours,

I did it! It took almost 3 hours and I have to give many thanks to David Cumps.  I have to say that in the spring I had attempted to take a php class and I just didn’t really get it.  I think if they could have related the class more to my blog and less to making a recipe website (cooking - bleh!), maybe I would have been more interested.  But tonight, I am so proud because I worked it out.  It took me forever to find phpMyAdmin and the table to edit and then I had to find my back up file and unzip it.  I also have 33 categories so just typing in all the data fields was rather time consuming.  I had to add the category names and slugs in the wp_terms table also because when I went to my wp-admin, it would not let me edit my categories, so that involved a little more trial and error.  I do believe they are all working now so please feel free to have a walk down memory lane.  I was just looking at some older posts and I can’t believe how much Agent K has changed just in the last year and a half.

Thank you for being so patient with my blog upgrade and theme change.  I still have some behind-the-scenes stuff to update, but I think I’m done with the major changes for now.  Perhaps on to some fiber content soon?  I hope!

Ok, so the plaintext theme didn’t last long. I liked it, but I just found one that has an easy to change header. Unfortunately, I do have to leave for work in a few minutes, so I have to leave you with this funky purple header for now. I promise it will get better and I will settle on a theme soon!

So what are your thoughts on this plaintxBlog theme? Is there anything missing from my other theme that you liked? If I keep it, I will do some customizing. I have to see if I can add a colorful header and warm it up a bit. I liked the old theme (Pomodoro) because it was warm and cozy, but it wasn’t cooperating so much with Wordpress 2.6 and it was rather busy. Did I ever mention that I’m not good with decisions?

Siloam Merle Kent

At least that is what we did!  We went to Nantasket Beach to be more precise.  It is in Hull, Massachuesetts which is south of Boston and north of Cape Cod.  I think that Cherylz had the “best-est guess” with the South Shores.

So, on a completely unrelated note, we upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 last night and, apparently, I have lost all my categories.  They are there but invisible.  I think the fix for that is very time consuming, so I may remain “category-less” for a while.  It happened because I was so far behind in my upgrades that we should have upgraded to 2.3 and then 2.6 but we didn’t read about that until after it was too late.  There is some info in the Ravelry groups that tells how to fix the problem.  I swear, I’m just going to skip the whole general internet thing and just look things up on Ravelry.  Knitters know everything!  Anyway, please just excuse any strangeness in my blog for a while.  I think I may be changing themes soon. As soon as I find a new one that I like that is.  I’d like to go for a plainer, less busy look.  I love the 3 columns but it just looks so crowded to me.  I’m thinking of Cutline 2 column because it is easy to change the header photo, but it is missing a couple elements that I really like. (Btw, IHA uses Cutline 3 column just in case you want to see it in a real life blog.)  If anyone has any favorite, easily customizable Wordpress themes to recommend, I would love to hear from you!

We’re back! And once again I’m low on time before I have to leave for work. I guess it is the typical Monday morning thing. I’m having a hard time drumming up the motivation to get myself to go. Does that ever happen to you?

So, would you like some clues before the big Mystery Vacation Reveal?

Clue 1: There were waves. There were even surfers riding the waves. I’m assuming with the presence of surfers, I can actually upgrade my claim and say that there were indeed big waves.

Clue 2: There was a carousel. This was a rescued carousel from an old-time amusement park torn down to make way for condos. (Carousels remind me of high school freshman English class. You too?)

Clue 3: This is the view from our hotel room balcony. There was beach, pavement, and lots of eating establishments.

Clue 4: There were boogie-boarding lessons. Oh yeah, and the air was HOT and the water was like ICE!

Clue 5: Huge difference from low tide to high tide. At high tide the remaining beach area was very tiny and compact, but at low tide, it felt like it took minutes to walk down to meet the water. This was a huge beach and even walking along the beach, we never reached either end.

Clue 6: The girls stayed in the water so long that I read an entire book in 2 days — The Society of S, in case you are wondering, and it was excellent; a cross between Twilight and Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

Clue 7: We rode a ferry and saw this skyline. I actually still feel like I’m riding on the ferry and that was yesterday morning. (Does this ever happen to you?) I wish this darn computer would stop swaying back and forth.

OK, that is all the clues I have time for right now. It took about 4 hours to get there. It could have been shorter but as IHA’s usually very efficient and helpful navigator did not know where we were going, we had some rotary issue problems. (Oh wait, that could be Clue 8: Lots of rotaries!)

OK, I’m off to get ready for work, but please feel free to go ahead and guess. I think it is only LFG who knows where we went…

Tomorrow we leave for our grand adventure!  This is a vacation totally planned by IHA, and the girls and I are completely clueless about our destination.  As always happens when you mention that you are going on vacation, people ask, “Where?”  I think they are a bit surprised when the answer is “I don’t know.”   Everyone thinks this mystery vacation  is really cool and a number of people have mentioned how they would just love their spouse to help with planning a vacation let alone planning an entire thing.   Now, with all this anticipation and having piqued a lot in interest in where we could be going, there could be some repercussions on IHA’s reputation if this turns out less than fantastic.  Which I know that it won’t though because we will have fun anywhere as long as we are not camping.  Which we aren’t camping, are we, IHA?

Now, I’m having a really hard time telling if anyone is interested in my spicebush swallowtail chronicles but I’m going to keep at it because I think it will be fun to look back on these posts next year.  Yesterday, caterpillar #1 turned into its chrysalis.   The girls even saw it happening though I was at work.  They saw its last molting when that yellow “skin” came off from the previous phase and they saw it spin the strings that attach it to the blueberry bush.  How cool is that? Here is what he looks like now.   Seriously — this guy knows how to mimic a leaf:

I worry that he is going to bake out there in the sun everyday, but I’m going to trust he knew what he was doing when he picked that spot.  I can’t find caterpillar #2 right now.  I think he might be in that yellow phase somewhere. I think he may have also left his spicebush.  Maybe he is looking for a cooler location for his change of life?

I was hoping to be able to write some posts to publish while I was away but that didn’t really work out.  I haven’t even learned how to moblog yet, though I think IHA can post from his phone to his blog so if we have time, we’ll let you know where we are.  Have a great weekend everyone!

One of my Spicebush Swallowtail guys has moved to the blueberry bush and turned yellow.

He is currently only attached at the bottom and maybe there are a couple of fibers there at the top too now that I’m looking closely. To put things in prospective here he is on his bush. He really isn’t all that big. His cohort is still in the looking-like-a-snake-living- in-a-curled-up-leaf instar stage. I guess metamorphoses don’t happen overnight.

I have no idea how long it takes for the complete transformation to chrysalis, but I hope that nothing happens to him and we get to find out .

We only have 2 more days before we leave on our mystery vacation. I asked IHA to check and see if there are any yarn shops where we are going, and, indeed, he has confirmed that we will be near one. Yay.

We have a pair of spicebush swallowtail larvae living on one of the spicebushes I bought at the Earth Day Conservation District plant sale this spring which, of course, are still not planted.

The spicebushes are the ones on the middle step and the caterpillars live on the one on the lefthand side.

The same day that we had our photo session at home with our little guys, we went for a hike at Sessions Woods where we encountered a biologist in the parking lot just waiting to show someone the larvae in the photo above. He told us that in the earlier instar, the larvae is “disguised” as bird poop. The caterpillar goes from being something yucky and seemingly inedible to being something that looks super scary to its potential predators. (I guess they are supposed to look like snakes, but I think they look rather cute myself and I certainly do not think that snakes look cute.) We are not at this stage yet, but the pupae is a leaf mimic, and the adult butterfly mimics a poisonous blue swallowtail butterfly. Evolution is just amazing, isn’t it?

During the day, they curl a leaf around them so I had to have a “volunteer” to hold the leaf so I could take photos. Any guesses on which agent is in the above photo?

This is another example of the kind of wildlife I like to see in my garden (and, indeed, the reason I bought the spicebushes). If you look closely at the bush you can certainly see that they have eaten quite a few leaves, but unlike the deer, they are sharing and they have not eaten the whole entire bush leaving nothing behind for the rest of society. (Yes, can you tell that I am still bitter about the deer? I don’t even think I have started here about our woodchuck yet - another very selfish little critter!)

So just to show you that I do still have some flowers growing in my yard, here are a few more photos from today:

We still can’t remember what this day lily is called. If anyone knows, I wouldn’t mind a little reminder.

Bee balm

Here is the Red Volunteer which I write about all the time. These are truly wonderful, I highly recommend them. Today was just our first day with flowers, but they last an entire month. Well, the flowering lasts an entire month, each flower still only lasts for a day.

I don’t remember what this one is called, but it is a different kind of lily, not a day lily. but possibly an Asian lily. It grows from a little bulb and the foliage all dies off after it flowers. The deer really like this one too.

This one is just peachy, but I can’t remember its name either. My favorite thing about this one is that the petals are so thick. It is hard to describe, but this is one solid flower!

I meant to just write a quick thing about the spicebush duo, and now it is getting late. I have a lot of blog posts planned though. I have some dyeing stuff to write about and my sock knitting is actually progressing! I also have a trademark update and next week is our mystery vacation! Only IHA knows where we are going. I am really enjoying the unknown. I think it is because I can’t really worry about it since I have no clue where we are going except that it is less than a 6 hour drive. The girls, on the hand, are completely losing their minds and are trying to figure out where we are going and begging daddy for more info constantly. He better be deleting his computer history!

The girls are back from camp. I don’t think I ever got around to posting this, but all last week they were at sleep-away camp. They go to Camp Mohawk which is a YMCA camp in Northwestern CT. This is Agent K’s fifth year at camp so I’m at the point where I can send them there and not *really* worry about them too much. (By saying *really*, I mean not much above my normal level of worry.) Anyway — dropping off 3 girls and picking up 3 girls all at once is always a bit difficult. At drop offs they are all anxious to go to their own cabins and pick out their beds and there are 3 of them and only 2 of us. At pickups they all have their own little agendas too, and once again there are 3 of them and only 2 of us. So, this is all leading up to me telling you about the amazing thing that happened yesterday. LFB came down from VT to get Grandpa to take him up to spend some time with him and LFG at their home and they also took Agent K with them! This is really great for a multitude of reasons. Great for Agent K because she gets to have a new experience and gain some more independence and great for us because for a few days there are 2 girls at home and 2 of us! Phew.

So yesterday, after doing a very large quantity of yard work, we took Agents J and B off to play mini-golf — the least bickery mini-golf that I have ever played with children in my entire life! And another most amazing thing happened; the person least likely to have the lowest score and win the game actually won! (And if you have ever played mini-golf with me, you would know who that could be!) After the game, as we were really ALL winners, we took the girls to the store to pick up some groceries and let them each choose 2 ice cream toppings for sundaes. Yum!