Tuesday...

[fajrdrako]

It's still wintry cold out there. When will it never get warmer?

• Met green_dreams at the library at noon for a book exchange; I felt vaguely conspiratorial, as if I were meeting my drug-dealer. Fair enough: books are my drug of choice, though I like to call it therapy or pleasure-reading or even education. She was knitting a gorgeous sock; I was jealous of her talent. (I'll get there.) She works across the street from the library. She can go there at lunchtime. I'm jealous of that, too, but it's just was well - my library addiction is already out of hand - though not as acute as it used to be, when I worked near the Rideau Branch.
  
  
• Had lunch with gamergrrl. She has been clearing out her closets (I did some of that last week, too).
  
  
• Worked all afternoon on political websites. I find them fascinating. Some are really good, some dire. On the whole I find the Conservative sites garish, cluttered, uninformative, self-congratulatory, ugly, and dominated by white males - or is it that my political prejudices are showing? The Liberal sites are a mixed bag: some informative and good, some incoherent, some simply incomplete. The NDP has some great sites, but seems to have a lot of candidates with no web presence at all. The Green Party has its act together: most of the candidates have websites on a common (but not identical) layout and style. My only complaint about them is that most of the candidates don't have their mailing addresses listed, but I can understand that: most of them probably can't afford constituency offices.
  
  
• I feel sad about the death of Diana Wynne Jones, news of which has been echoing through my various mailing lists. She was at one time one of my favourite authors, though I haven't had much chance to read her books lately. Dalemark, Howl, the Ogre downstairs, Luke, Crestomanci, all those quirky Edwardian girls with smart brains and weird adventures.... And my very favourite, Power of Three. She was one of those authors who was never pretentious, yet who was never superficial and was always original, with a beautiful writing style.
  
  
• Went to a Job Search Seminar at the Ottawa Public Library. I'd hoped it wouldn't be a waste of time, and it wasn't; there was lots of good advice there, though his main point (made a thousand times by everyone who ever touched the subject) was: Make a good first impression. Right. It's all about people.
  
  
• On the bus on the way home, there was a man sitting across from me who was monologuing in a demented and depressing style, the kind of person you really don't want to share a bus ride with. Luckily he got off really soon. Then the nice gentleman sitting next to me then started making conversation, and it turns out he's from Salford, the Coronation Street town in Yorkshire. I felt all nostalgic for Yorkshire, truly one of the most beautiful places on this planet. Though sometimes I think that's treated as a well-kept secret. He appeared quite thrilled to hear I'd lived in London for a while (as he had), but heck, that's us and about seven million people and more.
  
  
• Managed to find time to do exercises while watching Burn Notice, the first episode of season 2. Set my DVR to record Endgame and discovered the time/date settings were off by five years and and odd number of weeks, months, days, and hours. No wonder I failed to tape the last thing I set it for. I wonder how that happened. Power failure, or has the machine simply lost its mind? Possibly. It's aging. Not as responsive as it used to be. Electonic dementia. At least it isn't grumbling racist epithets to a crowded busload of people.
  

Comments

[green_dreams]

*hugs* Thank you. And I hope you like them. And I have one sock done! Just the other to do now.

The pattern's A Midsummer Night's Dream, except I decided I needed three vines instead of one. Because, you know, when knitting a sock for the first time one should always complicate it, thereby ensuring that it takes over a year to finish. (And the yarn helps. It is lovely yarn. (...are you on Ravelry?))

[fajrdrako]

What's Ravelry?

you know, when knitting a sock for the first time one should always complicate it, thereby ensuring that it takes over a year to finish.

Exactly the way I like to operate!

[green_dreams]

It's... an online community, I guess? You sign up, and you can track details of your stash, create pages for each of your projects, queue up patterns you want to work on, join discussion groups (e.g.: "My Knitting Has Cat Hair In It"). Free to join, lets you upload pictures and send messages to other knitters and... you know. Sticks and string. :)

(I'm Torrain on there, BTW.)

[fajrdrako]

Another delightful online temptation! There are so many. Thanks for telling me about it; I'm joining.

[fajrdrako]

Thanks for pointing out that site. I love the pattern - something to go for when I have more confidence. (Or skill. Whichever comes first.)

Love your icon, too.

[green_dreams]

Knitty? They rock. :) Weirdly, I've been looking at the leaf pattern again and I think the trickiest part might actually be the stems; they're eensy cables. The leaves are just YOs and K2togs.

Sock toes are something to swear about the first few times, but Marna walked me through them; they're not hard, just fiddly. Like dpns.

And thank you. I wanted a picture of Angus sleeping on the yarn, or something, but he would not cooperate. So I went looking for something I could make him-ish. :)

[fajrdrako]

I aspire to your level of competence. Someday. Right now simple scarves look a little intimidating to me.

[green_dreams]

...you say that now, and to maintain the illusion I will not tell you how much I have been swearing at the hat I am knitting now. How very, very much.

Honestly, I figure I have done yarn-overs and knit two stitches together by accident. It's just a matter of tracking them. :) Elizabeth Zimmerman says there's no such thing as a mistake, just a misplaced technique. I remind myself of this.

Also, I frog. Sometimes a lot. ;)

[fajrdrako]

What's frogging?

Misplaced technique. Yes. I am memorizing the phrase for future use.

[green_dreams]

Oh! Unravelling chunks of knitting. Because you "rip it" back, see? And it sounds like "ribbit" and...

Okay, it sounds weird when I try to explain it. :)

(Also, "tinking" is knitting backwards; undoing stitches slowly, one at a time, and putting them back on the original needle. Because "tink" is "knit", backwards.)

[fajrdrako]

Oh. Right. Cool. Now I can talk the talk. Frogging. It's my best thing.

And 'tink' is handy, too.

Another great icon.