Yeah, I’m still on the right side of the dirt. There was just a lot of running around this weekend and then lots of work on Monday and Tuesday.
Friday we ate ourselves stupid at a fondue party (a couple that I will hereafter refer to as The Hillfolk make excellent fondue), Saturday it was up to Berkeley with another couple* for a flea market, Tribal Throwdown, Lacis, and a St. Patrick’s Day supper, Sunday it was otters and then over to yet another couples’ for High Tea and meeting their new baby boy, Monday and Tuesday it was all-day meetings with people from my company’s new development partner, then staying late to catch up on all the work that didn’t get done because of the meetings. Whew.
The flea market was great, as flea markets tend to be. Such an odd assortment of stuff! I got some patchwork and mirror belts for dance – with some long scrap yarn* fringe these will look cool, I think. R:tAG found a board game (Trinity Battleground) for cheap, too.
Tribal Throwdown was good… smallish but that’s how I like my conventions. I took a workshop with Jill Parker and realized once again that it takes me much longer than most people to learn kinetically. I don’t think dance workshops have a good ROI for me; I need repetition, mirrors, and patient teachers who are willing to explain the same thing a bunch of different ways (usually not practical in a typical size workshop). This was on the same weekend as Rakkasah and I suspect there is an ugly story behind that, but in practice it’s not bad since Rakkasah is more general and Tribal Throwdown (as implied by its name) focuses on ATS and tribal fusion. From what I hear, though, the vending at Rakkasah is amazing. Like, football field-sized room amazing. Probably a good thing I didn’t go. I’m not performing, so there’s really no reason to buy lots of pretty, sparkly things… mmmm… shiny…
OK, I’m back now. After the dance thing (the men went off to do a tour of the gaming and book stores of Berkeley while we danced) we went to Lacis which is The Most Amazing Historical Costuming Store EVAR. The web site is sort of sad (over ten years old!) and does not reflect the jaw-dropping glory that is Lacis. And it turns out a friend of ours* has started working there, so I spent about two hours there without even really realizing it, and didn't even see a whole room of the store, and only left because they closed the shop and kicked me out (and because my companions were all agitating for supper. Wimps.). So we had sushi at the Drunken Fish for our St. Patrick’s Day supper****
Sunday was a members-only preview of the Wild About Otters exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we took The Hillfolk down to check it out. Otters are cool. R:tAG was pleased.
Oh, and somewhere in there we saw the new animated Hellboy – Sword of Storms movie. It was really quite good. I think I prefer animated to live action for stuff like this (Exhibit B: Clone Wars)
And my parents are coming for a visit next week. Busy, busy, busy!
* The female half is in my dance class and is also a costuming geek, the male half is a computer/gaming geek and therefore gets along with R:tAG very well. I might have to come up with blog-worthy nicknames for them since we’re hanging out a lot.
** I have a little bit of scrap yarn.
*** One of the couple with whom we went to the idyllic mountain stream
**** Last year we had Mexican. Our general policy for holidays is to find a restaurant of an ethnicity as far away as possible from the one celebrating the holiday. Irish pubs are for Cinco de Mayo.
We’re on daylight savings three weeks early, by government fiat, so today is a day of confused computers and general brain-lag because all of a sudden it's an hour later than it should be. Luckily my Mom called yesterday to remind me it was happening (she knows that, having been raised in a sane place, I tend to forget these arbitrary time changes).
I’ve just been accumulating links for the past few weeks and saving them for a day where there is nothing else particularly of interest. And that day is here!
We went to see 300 yesterday. I liked it, but I think R:tAG liked it more than I did. I think the movie appeals especially to something in the male hindbrain even though visually this is a movie for the ladies, what with all the leather posing pouches and the CGI enhanced abs* and all. We did get a few giggles from one scene where the narrator describes Leonidas as standing in front of the Persians with his 300 men behind him… and what’s actually behind him is this little turtle of about 15 shields. I started snickering and R:tAG whispered “Maybe they’re all in a hole” which made me snicker even more**. And poor Ephialtes… it’s not enough that his name was already synonymous with Benedict Arnold, he gets portrayed as a deformed monster? And Xerxes? The hell?***
We also saw Ghost Rider last weekend (which was powerful weak IMHO and others’) and Talladega Nights, which was funnier than I thought it would be. It’s sort of unfortunate, though not really, that the two movies are getting blended together in my head. I mean, both have racing guys in suits covered in logos (with pornish girlfriends and good ol' boy sidekicks) screaming about being on fire… I’m not crazy, it’s true!
Anyway, on to these links!
Person Cosy - I have so had days like this.
Huggies Thongs
The Awful Guide to Graduate School
Squee! - They’re making a “The Dark is Rising” movie, and it’s got Christopher Eccleston in it!
Scott Adams’ Happiness Formula - Similar to the old “Good, cheap or fast; pick two” axiom.
Bulwer-Lytton 2006 Fiction Contest - the long-running contest for the "best" (i.e. worst) opening sentence of works in various genres.
NFCTD - So, so pretty
Order of the Stick - This is always funny, but Mr. Burlew has really outdone himself with this one (no background required)
OK, these last two are knitting-related, sort of, but they’re so ridiculous that I think they’re of general appeal:
Scarf - This is a pattern. INSTRUCTIONS for wrapping a hank of yarn around your neck. For when actually making anything from it is just too much work
High Fashion Knitting - This just made me stare and laugh. The sixth picture in particular. How much would you have to pay someone to wear that?
* Really, it was excessive. At one point I thought it looked like nothing more than a parade of McRib sandwiches in red cloaks.
** The other time I snickered was when a Spartan referred dismissively to the Athenians as “lovers of boys.” O RLY? Though I did appreciate that they kept a few indicators that the Spartans continued homosexual relationships into adulthood – i.e. that the dismissive remark was on the order of “They are lovers of boys… we are lovers of men!”
*** My biggest problem with the movie was how much it felt like thinly disguised Republican propaganda... the small group of Manly Aryan Men (are there that many blonde Greeks?) bucking the cowardice of the (old and/or diseased and/or corrupt) opposition and going to defend themselves against the evil and degenerate threat from the Middle East... eeesh.
On Saturday there was a huge treasure hunt in San Francisco; a yearly event held in honour of the Chinese New Year (it takes place on the same night as the big parade). Our genius friend who’d written the Palo Alto one asked us to join his team, so of course we said yes. It was really really fun. We cockily entered the “Regular” level instead of the beginner one, even though we’d never been on one of these before, and the five of us solved 14 of the 18* clues. Not enough to win or place (there were hundreds of teams) but a very respectable showing for novices not from the city, I think!**
The other fun part was that there were additional prizes for best team name (i.e. most awful pun) and best costumes. Since it is the Year of the Pig, the names and costumes were all porcine in nature. The top costume was a group in lab coats with pig tails in the back – Team Niels Boar (the lab coats also had pictures of “boar”on atoms) with a close second being the Porkchop Assassins - ninjas with pig noses. The top name was “I Never Sausage A Team!” The pig is the best animal for puns, I think, what with all the pork products.
Next year is the Year of the Rat, I believe. I’ll have to get the costume and pun ideas percolating. We didn’t have time to do anything impressive this year… next year will be different!
Also different next year will be my level of preparation. I’d thought my foot was healed but it wasn’t***, so I started favouring it, which gave me blisters on my other foot. We were walking briskly for about four hours solid, up and down hills and stairs… a lot of walking and no time for breaks. We ended up relying heavily on a more foresighted team-mate who’d brought crackers and fruit. Also, I’d brought along a laptop thinking internet capability might be useful. It would have been, had we been able to actually connect anywhere. We weren’t, so the laptop was just dead weight. Next year I will beg, borrow or steal a Blackberry or something.****
Live and learn!
* We would have gotten more if it hadn’t been for New Year’s; the crowds and the parade itself turned into a huge strategic consideration which delayed us several times. On the other hand, it lent a wonderful air of surreality to the event; looking for the inscription on a manhole cover by the light of sparklers and firecrackers, while people with banners and huge masks ran around.
** Even the top five teams only got 17 out of the 18.
*** I should have known this from my last dance class, where I decided I could try barefoot spins again, which ended up with the instructor dabbing the carpet with paper towels and asking me if I had hepatitis.
**** Or perhaps I will have an iPhone by then... I am not schlepping a laptop again, though.
Oh my. I think I exceeded even my own expectations about spending money at Stitches. Here comes another contribution to Doctors Without Borders to balance my karma. But there was all the pretty… I think that Rachael of Yarn-A-Go-Go said it best:
It's kind of being a kid again at Disneyland, isn't it? I want! I want everything, and look at this, and what about that, and that's my favorite thing EVER, and I'M TIRED I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE and oooooh, pretty, I want that!Of course, this kid had a credit card and no parental supervision.
The damage: Five bags of 50% off Garnstudio Camelia which I’m told may be discontinued and that is a crying shame, one bag of 50% off Uruguay DK, a darning needle case made of wood, a lapis necklace*, buttons for a woefully neglected cardigan,** six skeins of a 20% off lovely moss-green merino DK whose name I forget, and a 10% off impulse skein of a novelty yarn (Kid Slique but in a new colour not shown in that link that looks almost exactly like a black magpie feather; mainly plain black with shots of shiny dark purple, blue and green.). Whew.
Y’all may not care about this, but for my own personal interest here’s what I plan:
- Gray-purple (I’d call it “dead lilacs”) Camelia (10 skeins): Alice Starmore’s Cromarty.
- Lovely juicy reddish purple Camelia (10 skeins): Undecided. It would make an excellent stole/shawl thing, though. Or a thneed.
- Deep slightly grayish blue Camelia (10 skeins): Perhaps this cardigan (designed for this yarn! And I think this picture might actually be the exact colour I have! I am slightly ashamed. I almost never make things in the colour (or yarn) in the pattern)
- Charcoal grey heather Camelia (20 skeins): A gansey for R:tAG, maybe one I design myself. Yep, another gray sweater. And I’m only half done the MMBR*** sweater for him!
- Magpie-wing Kid Slique (1 skein): It’s so pretty! I’m letting it marinate, petting it occasionally, until I decide whether to make a thin scarf out of just it, a more substantial scarf out of it and a plain black yarn, or a more substantial scarf out of it and a white yarn to go with a more obvious magpie reference. Maybe striped lengthways – two black stripes framing the white center stripe? But then I’m afraid it will look more skunky than magpie-ey, especially here in magpie-less CA. What do you, the viewers at home, think?
- Uruguay DK (10 skeins of crimson): Kate Gilbert's Equestrian Blazer. I lurve this design, though I hope my colour choice doesn’t end up reading as “Tally ho for a spot of fox-hunting, eh what?”
- Moss green merino by I-can’t-remember (6 skeins): I'd like to make Elsebeth Lavold’s Liv but I’m worried about running out and that design doesn’t really lend itself to the standard hamburger-helper tricks like striping or making the ribbing, collar and cuffs in a different colour. I'll have to see if I can find more.
I already have the MMBR sweater, a lace shawl, a baby blanket and a pair of socks actually in progress. And, <<ahem>> I may have started Cromarty already and done one skein’s worth of it. Just to see if I’d have enough of the Camelia yarn, which I won’t**** so I have to order more, and I have to do that wit’ a quickness, as the kids say, if they’re discontinuing this yarn and/or colour.
OK. I will at least finish the baby blanket and the front of the MMBR before I cast on anything new. Pinky swear.
So. What's new with you?
* Not all the vendors sell fiber, some sell pretty shiny things. Argh. It should just be called the “Make Amy Spend Money Festival.”
** This design, Ljod, is the one I alluded to looking like a Jetson’s outfit and that I was going to rip out. I’ve become a bit fonder of it, though, and I think I’ll try re-working the shoulders which were the most egregious part. The wool that I used didn’t drape like the recommended wool-silk blend, so the shoulder caps turned into these 1980’s-puffy-Gibson-girl-leg-of-mutton things that are not flattering to my line-backer shoulders, to say the least. I still don’t know about the flared hem in the crisper wool, but at least I’ll fix the shoulders and re-evaluate it.
*** Miles and Miles of Bloody Ribbing.
**** I was pretty sure I wouldn’t; the stated yardage is ~1875 yards and I had 1750. Which I would normally say might be possible, but everyone who’s made this says that the given yardage is way low and they all ran out. Sure ‘nuff, one ball took me almost exactly one quarter up the front. The usual formula is 1/3 for the front, 1/3 for the back and 1/3 for both sleeves. The math is left as an exercise for the reader.
Labels: knitting
(They are so too lyrics! Here!)
恭喜發財 for the Year of the Pig! I’m told it’s a “fire pig” year, which means a lot of barbecues, I guess. I’ll have to make something suitable.
So I had a travellin’ weekend; a friend from my regular dance class and I went up to the Fat Chance studios for a couple of classes (This was also the weekend of Dundracon, so this also meant a lot of driving since we still have only the one car* and R:tAG was running a session of his cool as-yet-unpublished game so I had to drop him off). The classes were interesting and of course Fat Chance is like the Mecca of ATS, but I have to say that my personal learning style needs more words and more feedback than those particular classes provided. Plus they apparently hired the Marquis de Sade to provide flooring for the studio; it’s some kind of rubber that not only has seams so bumpy that you can stub your toe on them, it is also so grippy that it tore the calluses off my left foot**. No lie; I now have three nickel-size holes in the sole of my foot (right side of the ball, left side of the ball and fleshy part of the big toe) all the way to the dark red tender meat layer. Owie. Note to self – put ballet shoes into dance bag for next time.
Afterwards we went (limped, in my case) to a lovely little tea house called Samovar and completely by coincidence, across the street was Imagiknit, a yarn store that I’d always wanted to visit but never actually found. So we spent a while there, but… OK, you might want to sit down for this part…
I didn’t buy anything.
Not a scrap. Part of it was the old ferret-shock of being overwhelmed by choices, some of it was them not having quite enough of the only yarn I really wanted***, but the main reason is that Stitches West is this weekend and I plan to go – what’s the phrase? – ah yes, “buckwild” there. Because this time, unlike last year, I am mentally and financially prepared.
So then it was back to Dundracon, and I got to play in an excellent Savage Worlds game**** unexpectedly, which was very nice.
Man, there’s a lot of stuff to do here. This Queen Elizabeth and the Pirate event is happening this Saturday, which I didn’t hear about in time, plus I’d want to go to a Costuming Guild event suitably attired and I don’t have anything appropriate. But now I’m keeping an eye on their calendar, and dayum, I could spend a lot of time with these people.
Choices, choices...
* About twice a year, we think “Gee, it would be convenient to have another vehicle” but so far we’ve resolved it by either renting something or just sucking it up and doing more driving, which has worked out to be far cheaper.
** You almost always do spins on your left foot in this dance style, and you usually practice barefoot.
*** Thin cotton for this. I can find the thin alpaca, no problem, but the cotton is proving more tricksy. I want to keep the mix of the two yarns instead of just using a single thicker one, because I suspect that the firmness of the cotton is a big part of the structured look that I love so much about it. To get a firm fabric with a single wool yarn, I think I’d have to change the gauge, and that’s problematic with this design (note how the shaping on the sides is done).
**** Set in Austria just before the Seven Years’ War but with the difference that dragon riders are a key part of a country’s military. A fantasy air force, basically. So much fun!
