Hysterically funny. She, who speaks Tamil, can no longer sing any other lyrics. There’s a whole series of “buffalaxed” videos on youTube. Did *you* get high today? I see the nuns are gay.
Creepy cool, hot
Chocolade Haas (Chocolate Hare). Via Jeff. Made by the delightfully-named Sander Plug. For an art project for preschoolers called Big Art for Little People. I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed it, pre school. But I love it now.
Who needs Facebook?
When there’s Ravelry. Ok, so it’s in beta and you have to get invited but if you’re a knitter… sign up! do it now!
For why?
Because, if you’re a knitter, it answers just about every need you’ve ever had. Seriously.
When I were a wee lass back in 1991 and I had my first PDA, a Psion Series 3 ‘Classic’ (a Christmas present from my father – he had no idea, I presume, what he was starting… this was my first computer and is responsible for all ensuing techno-love-joy and me sitting here now) I started making a database of knitting patterns and materials.
But of course. What else was a girl with a Psion to do? Particularly a girl with very few friends to enter in the contacts section. Incidentally, I never met another girl with a Psion. There must have been some, somewhere. I did meet a few males with them but found conversation difficult. But not as much as they did. Anyway, I digress.
I realised that I had two unfortunate habits. One was indiscriminately to buy yarn when- and where- ever I saw it on sale at knock-down prices (thus early on in life building up a truly impressive stash) and the other was to buy large numbers of books and magazines (mostly Rowan) of patterns. What I needed was a sensible way of bringing the two together. Thus was born my personal knitting database.
I was going to enter details of every pattern I had – general type of garment/accessory, name of pattern, name of yarn, equivalent weight (Rowan, for instance, still has a range of exotically-named yarns which don’t at first sight always convey much information about how thick they are), yardage of yarn required for each size, needles, findings etc. I also rated the patterns by difficulty and how much I liked them. Then, the theory went, the next time I bought a cone of 1000g of 5 ply wool at a totally bargainous price I’d actually be able to find something to make out of it.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever inputted lots of data into a database, particularly without knowing what you are doing. If not take it from me it’s a real bind. That may explain why I didn’t get very far. But the idea was an absolute corker.
It’s just one of the many many things Ravelry does/is doing. But instead of one inept novice in the UK cataloguing her books and stash using the technology of 1990s it’s tens of thousands of fanatics across the globe using the social interwebbing magic of the 21st century. So I can, for instance, pop over to their pattern browser, select as many or as few variables as I want and then amble in a leisurely way through pictures of patterns for cardigans for women using 4 ply yarn, clicking for further details on any I like the look of.
How cool is that? Cooler than 0 K, in my opinion.
You *can* make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (and other excitements)
There’s a meme-with-a-difference going round… ask, and ye shall receive. Or rather comment, and you’ll get something in the post. As in the snail-mail, not the blog entry. Or perhaps both. For the first four supplicants.
I first saw it at Jean‘s where people were being backward in coming forward. I asked for a thick ear, and lo! here it is:
You’re not really allowed to specify what you want but she kindly obliged, albeit with a liberal interpretation.
So now it’s my turn. The first four people to request in the comments will get either a print of a picture of their choice or a bespoke knitted gewgaw. And the duty of continuing the tradition.
Other excitements include the qarrtsiluni widget in the sidebar (far right, you might need to scroll down a bit) displaying the most recent entries of that august ‘zine. Some of which have added ear-candy. There’s still a fortnight to go to submit items on the current theme, Insecta. There are some incredible photographs there.
I put together this montage of various aspects of the fruit fly (Drosophila) from copyright free material found hanging around on the web but it wasn’t the sort of thing the (excellently) stringent editors were looking for. I like it, though 🙂 We know so much about this organism. And so little.
It’s better bigger, so click here to see it at a reasonable size.
The latest Festival of the Trees, November Arborea, is up at Larry Ayres’ Riverside Rambles and there’s a mouthwatering quantity of photographs among this month’s offerings.
And then there’s the new banner. Over at Krista‘s. Which is exceedingly exciting. (She tells me humans see more verticals than horizontals which makes me feel better about the difficulty I had forcing myself to see sideways, even a little bit.)
In fact it’s almost as exciting as the knitting project we’ve got, um, round our necks. Almost. But not quite. Because few things could be that exciting. I expect further bloggage on the subject will be forthcoming.
And don’t forget – if you’d like a print or a knitted trifle just say so in the comments.
You *can* make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (and other excitements)
There’s a meme-with-a-difference going round… ask, and ye shall receive. Or rather comment, and you’ll get something in the post. As in the snail-mail, not the blog entry. Or perhaps both. For the first four supplicants.
I first saw it at Jean‘s where people were being backward in coming forward. I asked for a thick ear, and lo! here it is:
You’re not really allowed to specify what you want but she kindly obliged, albeit with a liberal interpretation.
So now it’s my turn. The first four people to request in the comments will get either a print of a picture of their choice or a bespoke knitted gewgaw. And the duty of continuing the tradition.
Other excitements include the qarrtsiluni widget in the sidebar (far right, you might need to scroll down a bit) displaying the most recent entries of that august ‘zine. Some of which have added ear-candy. There’s still a fortnight to go to submit items on the current theme, Insecta. There are some incredible photographs there.
I put together this montage of various aspects of the fruit fly (Drosophila) from copyright free material found hanging around on the web but it wasn’t the sort of thing the (excellently) stringent editors were looking for. I like it, though 🙂 We know so much about this organism. And so little.
It’s better bigger, so click here to see it at a reasonable size.
The latest Festival of the Trees, November Arborea, is up at Larry Ayres’ Riverside Rambles and there’s a mouthwatering quantity of photographs among this month’s offerings.
And then there’s the new banner. Over at Krista‘s. Which is exceedingly exciting. (She tells me humans see more verticals than horizontals which makes me feel better about the difficulty I had forcing myself to see sideways, even a little bit.)
In fact it’s almost as exciting as the knitting project we’ve got, um, round our necks. Almost. But not quite. Because few things could be that exciting. I expect further bloggage on the subject will be forthcoming.
And don’t forget – if you’d like a print or a knitted trifle just say so in the comments.
One sunset
“Are you”, the hypno-questionnaire asked, if memory serves me correctly, “the sort of person who enjoys looking at sunsets?”
I’m sooo glad I whizzed back into the house and picked up my camera this afternoon having set off on towards the school without it. There was something about the quality of light just outside the front door that boded well.
It appears that I’m the sort of person who’s perhaps over-enthusiastic about sunsets. Here are the pictures I took, all of them, in order, as the sun descended in the sky and we walked in a north-westerly direction from school to home.
Even the large bins in the park are gilded and beautiful.
A vapour trail gleams silver against the slightly purpled sky, offsetting the gold below.
The gap in the row of houses lets us see another layer of gold.
This buddleia is just next to the railway line and Tuesday’s trees.
Allowing Maizy off the lead in the open space we (inaccurately) call “the field” gives us even bigger skies to admire as the clouds and light change, minute by minute.
This structure used to be a church. It’s being transformed or perhaps “repurposed”. Its silhouette is if anything improved by the scaffolding.
Very nearly home now.
I’ve been thinking about a sense of place since reading Jean and Dave and Whiskey River.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anywhere to be home in a positive way. Home was, in my childhood, not a place of safety. Since then it’s generally been somewhere less bad than other places. How can one, though, feel present anywhere if one is not present to oneself? As I become more able to be with myself rather than finding ways to “not be”, it seems I’m more able to be in the world too.
The square in which most of my life takes place – nodes formed by home, school, shops, shrink – has become more like a space that is mine as I more belong to me.
Nameless Cat is no more
No, he has not died of starvation or indeed any other ailment, self-inflicted or otherwise.
He has… a name!
Since his appetite returned in spectacular fashion (and for all you anxious googlers concerned about anorexic cats the sure-fire remedy is sardines tinned in tomato sauce – the flavour of sauce is very important – and most vets have large quantities about their premises apparently), Cat has very quickly become – gasp – overweight. Or so said the vet when I took both creatures for their jabs and she weighed them.
Sigh.
The reason for this incipient obesity is probably Cat’s major carbohydrate cravings. The other day he demolished most of a french stick, bread being one of his favourites. But he also likes sweet things, particularly cake. A swiss roll was massacred recently but not as devastatingly as yesterday’s cherry and walnut cake.
Herein lies the genesis of the name. What else can one call a cat who, if there is no bread deigns to eat cake, other than Mario Antoinette. Mario for short.
And while we accustom him to his new handle we’re calling him Mario Kat.
Hypnofrabjous!
That was quick – the test was only a couple of days ago.
The measure we used during the study was the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and is one of the most reliable and widely used measure of hypnotisability. The scores range from 0 (least hypnotisable) to 12 (most hypnotisable).
You scored 11, which puts you in the high hypnotisable range.
Please note that hypnotisability has no relation to gullibility (being fooled), giving in to being pressured by others (conformity), or believing unusual things. In fact people who are high hypnotisable have been found to have better attention and concentration than others.
So, do I fancy further guinea piggery?
Hmmm. Let me think about it.
For a picosecond or two.
Painting with light
This morning the early sun tipped over the rooftops and shone the yellow leaves of a small silver birch to a fountain of firework brightness.
This afternoon a lightbrush washed leisurely lines behind the trees.
Round the corner we marvelled at a sky full of fiery scarlet scales. By the time we reached home a few minutes later they were gone.
Dumplings for lunch
Such a give-away. The recipe book, the phone and the notes, all together as above on the side in the kitchen. It was obvious that our hostess had been consulting her mother.
A regional speciality, apparently, from her home area of Germany. A form of meat-stuffed dumplings – minced liver sausage and some other form/s of meat not vouchsafed to us – enfolded and rolled inside a potato-based dumpling shell. There they are awaiting immersion in the boiling water.
Once cooked they were covered in, what else, a meat sauce. Served, I assume possibly as a concession to the faddy Brits concerned about a balanced diet, with puréed apple.
Our hostess assured us, full of woe, that they were really nothing like as good as her mother’s. No, it wasn’t different ingredients, they were all from Germany. No, it wasn’t a different recipe or procedure since, as we had already detected, she’d double checked with the mother in question who had provided precise instructions.
Or maybe not entirely precise. “How thick should the layer of dumpling dough be?” our anxious chef had apparently asked. “Well, not too thick and not to thin” came the unarguable but unhelpful reply.
I love this shared unbroken chain of culinary self-defined failure spreading back, no doubt, daughter to mother, nigh unto the advent of fire.
They were, of course, absolutely delicious. But I needed a long period of motionlessness in a horizontal position afterwards.
frizzyLogic 