I should have bound off

or Sarah I need my ball winder back

Tuesday night, I was debating about how wide to make the moebius scarf. I decided to leave it for the evening then decide.

Greyhounds have been known to steal things, you are told if you can't find your remote go look in your grey's bed. After we had Keeper for a week, he picked up Trellis and tried to carry it to his bed. I scolded him. Repeat one minute later. Repeat 1 hour later. After those three times he has been pretty good at leaving my knitting alone. He has been trying to pick up the Dulaan vests that have been lying on the blocking board but WIP have been left. Until yesterday.

Keeper wanted to go for a walk at 4:30 - walks are usually after dinner around 7 or so. (He had just been out to potty). I tried to get him to play instead, he wasn't interested. I petted him for a couple of minutes then left him. I heard him go downstairs. I didn't think much of it. I heard him playing downstairs - I wonder what he is playing with as his favourite toys are up here. I go down the stairs. He had taken the Moebius scarf downstairs with him. He had managed to chew threw the needle, and several spots on the ball of yarn - besides unraveling the ball. SHIT!


At this point he has nothing in his mouth but parts of the ball are wound around his leg. I get it off him, take it upstairs and start putting stitches back on the needle (at this point I knew the cable was gone but not that the yarn was broken. While I was assessing the damage, he picks Trellis up, shakes his head (so the needle goes flying) and starts moving towards his bed. DROP IT!


So last night instead of finishing a project or even just making progress, two of my projects went backwards. Trellis won't be too bad. Just putting the stitches back. The moebius scarf however is another story. I picked up the stitches last night, and realized that their are loose ends in the scarf, I have started tinking back to where the yarn is continuous. Tinking curly mohair, 400 sts around - anyone want to come over and help. I think I have to go back 2 rounds.

What, what did I do?

Stashed with: Keeper, knitting

DVD commentary

This is my second to last NaBloPoMo post, I will be glad when November is finished. It is difficult coming up with interesting things to talk about every single day.
I'd just like to give a piece of advice to anyone who ends up doing commentary on DVDs from TV shows. Do not talk about future seasons.

Ali and I are making our way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I realize this has been off TV for a couple of years now, but we just got into it this fall and are slowly making our way through the seven seasons. We watch the season, then go and watch the commentary for the episodes. Makes sense, seems like how most people would do it. However, this weekend while watching the commentary for one of the seasons, the following was said "We set it up this way so when XX dies in Season B...." Ah, we haven't watched season B yet*. Thanks for telling me that that person dies. There had been hints and plot points discussed before which could be seen coming or were not overly important. However telling me that a character dies. Not fun. Talking about previous episodes or things that happened later in the same season is fine but don't talk about things that people watching the series for the first time on DVD won't have seen.

Just wanted two put in my two cents.

Stashed with: TV


*see it is easy to talk about a specific event without giving any information away.

Measuring The Speed of Meme:

With three days left in NaBloPoMo, I wasn't sure what I could write about today. Then as I was reading through the blogs, I came across this study in which a Ph.D. student is investigating how fast memes migrate through the blogosphere. Well I have to help out fellow students - it is part of the student code. He is tracking technorati tags, and wants everyone who comes across this post to mention it on their blog and ping technorati, and ask others to do the same. So please go to his site and mention this on your blog. You can also mention where you first saw this survey, although I don' t know if that is being tracked at all.

There is a few questions about validity, and maybe what defines a meme. I join things like NaBloPoMo and Dulaan 10000 or bust but I don't answer those 40 things you don't know about me memes. So the selectivity or entertainment value of the spreading memes needs to be taken into account. It will be interesting to see the results and how it spreads through different sectors.

Stashed with: NaBloPoMo, meme

Weekend knitting

I have now 3 projects that are almost done:
Charcoal Ribbed Socks - one toe needs to be grafted, ends woven in
Dulaan vest v1.0 and v2.2 both need ribbing for armholes and neck, v2.2 also needs to be seamed

So what did I choose to do on the weekend - well it wasn't finish any of these projects. To be honest, v2.2 was damp from blocking, and I want to make sure I have enough purple to finish that one before I finish v1.0. At least that is the story that I am going with. The socks, I have no excuse, they have been sitting in this state for a couple of weeks now.

Where was I? Oh yeah what was I knitting this weekend. I received this skein of Fleece Artist Goldilocks (the colour is a burgundy -similar to the pic in Wild & Wooly but not as bright) last year for Christmas. I thought about making it into a basic triangular shawl in the summer. However, I quickly realized that it would drive me crazy - it is difficult to see the YO and I know I would forget to do them and up with the a funky looking triangle. To the frog pond it went.

This yarn has been calling to me to knit it but it wasn't giving any indication on what it wanted. At the October guild meeting while I was looking at the library I saw Cat Bordhi's First Treasury Magical Knitting. I thought this would be a good combination, the simplicity of a stockinette mobius with the curls of the Goldilocks. After a search for an appropriate needle - I ended up using my Boyle Needle Master with three cords - I have cast on. I am enjoying it when all those little curls behave. I am going to have more than enough yarn so I might make a hat to go with the scarf when it is done.

Stashed with: knitting

Bookflix?

Ali and I belong to Zip.ca, it is very similar to the US Netflix. For those people not familiar with these services, you pay a monthly fee and they mail you DVD rentals. Depending on your plan, you can have from 2-5 movies at a time and 4 and up rentals a month. You have a list of movies on your account and when you return one, they mail you the title closest to the top of your list that they have in stock. We have been enjoying it, it is especially great for TV shows that their are 4 episodes on a disk and you may not have time to watch them all over a couple of days from a conventional rental place.
So where am I going with this, well I love the list feature. If someone recommends a movie, I can put it on the list and remember that for some reason I wanted to see this movie. When I come across a mention of a book that I might enjoy, I can add it to my list and at some point get it. Why can't I keep a paper list - I have tried, it works temporarily but you have to have the list close by (and not lose it). See I would love to go to my library and be able to see the list of books that I want to read and what books that I have in at that branch right now. With zip.ca you can see the lists of the most requested that week, the new releases, most rated lots of ways to get ideas. I have no problems going to my local library to take the books out, I don't need a rental feature for the books. It would just be nice to have a list at the library with books that I want to read.

I AM

You are 100% Canuck!

You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?

How Canadian Are You?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

but

You Are 39% New Jersey!

You've got a little Jersey in you. Not too bad, however you could have done a lot better. Based on this score, you may not actually be from New Jersey. You're missing out!

How New Jersey Are You?
Create a Quiz

Stashed with: misc

Sock wars - Truce

Socks wars officially ended today. The original plan if there was more than one survivor was the first to kill Yarn Monkey would win but there is an amazingly 79 participants alive. I think this was more than anyone thought there was going to be - more than I thought. Instead of getting 79 pairs of socks, people will kill Yarn Monkey with a post card and kill their last target with current socks.

I think there was postal delays - people were eager to get their socks out, but if they died, it might take them a couple of days until they got to the post office to mail their socks in progress on to their assassin. Some socks got sent across the Atlantic a couple of times. All of this contributes to the slow down in the momentum of the game. I think in the first week over 200 people were killed, in the two weeks maybe 20. The concept of the game was fun, and there was a lot of work done by the organizers. I think though that for another game something needs to be changed. Maybe there were too many people (and too many deserters -56), too quick of a pattern, several people knit the socks in one night. I don't know if a fewer people with a more complicated pattern on thinner yarn would do the trick. I am torn with the idea of an end date - part of me believes the end date is important as the game has slowed down, part believes there shouldn't be an end date to an Assassin game - the last person standing is the winner. I know I got frustrated early on dealing with a deserter and didn't finish my socks as soon as I could since I didn't know where I would be mailing them.

It will be interesting to see what happens during Head Games which was started by a few participants in Sock Wars - it is going with the same premise but with hats instead of socks. Another sock battle game is Sock Madness - which is a race against one other competitor with sock patterns that increase in difficulty. It looks like it could be a lot of fun but I am going to sit it out since I know I am not a fast knitter.

Stashed with: sock-wars