After the Main Index template disaster (MITD) things are back up and running at subwayknitter.com, thanks to some help from Gleek.  After taking a look under the blogging hood, so to speak, she correctly guessed that the problem stemmed from the display setting. 

I had MT set to display the last seven days of posts.  Of course, by last Friday night, all the sample posts which I had thrown up there were older than seven days.  Their disappearance had nothing to do with the changes I made to my sidebar.  Whew!

Never again will I change my templates without first making a backup copy.  It's very easy to copy and past an unadulterated copy of a template into a text file.  This is exactly what I did.  Now, I can tinker with abandon, and if I make a horrible mistake, the backup copy is there.

Meanwhile, my fingerless gloves are working up quickly. 

At this rate, I might have a pair by next weekend.  I finished the pinky.  For a touch of color, I bound off with the same green that I used on the cuff.