This is awesome. Somebody on AskMetaFilter asks about making pizza from scratch. Except they want to make it as from scratch as possible, like growing and grinding your own flour, making your own pepperoni, and foraging for your mushrooms. It’s a fascinating thought experiment. I laughed when I got to: “The best mozzarella for pizza is buffalo mozzarella. Do you have room for a buffalo in the backyard?”

I can’t read Finnish, but I found this great blog in my referrers this morning. (She links to my sock monkey tutorial.) I love the colours that she uses in her stuff, and those kids’ things are gorgeous. Also, if that is indeed a knitting needle roll with a hand-embroidered dragon on it… WANT.

I had occasion this morning to use the phrase “rack my brains” in an e-mail, and I realised I couldn’t remember if it was “rack” or “wrack.” Turns out it’s “rack.” And now you know!

What Video Game System Should I Buy? A handy flowchart discovered by the Snook. As he points out, it looks like we made the right choice.

Knitting Journal pages for printing. Neat! (Link courtesy of Bex in a Ravelry post.)

I really like the idea of the Love Mattress – snuggles are the BEST – but I can’t see how it would work with a normal sheet.

Sweet! Queen Elizabeth plays Wii! (Link courtesy of the Snook, who refers to her as “The Q wii n.”)

I had a lovely little old lady in the shop today who just DEPRESSED THE HECK out of me.

She came in at lunchtime and wanted to know where the Feathers was. I showed it to her, and then answered her questions about how many balls she’d need to make a couple scarves. As we walked back over to the counter, she happily told me that the scarves were a special request from her niece, who was going over to Italy soon. She thought it would be a nice idea to take some handknitted scarves to the Italians who were hosting her. “That IS a great idea!” I agreed. But – “why not use a merino, or one of the natural yarns that’s actually from Australia? I’m sure her hosts would love to see what we produce!” She agreed with me, but added, “Oh, but that’s so much more expensive.” She was so nice – and so excited to be fulfilling her niece’s request – that I couldn’t really bring myself to argue with her. So I sold her her $30 worth of novelty acrylic and watched her head out the door. Sad.

I apologise in advance to the people of Italy, and I’d like to add that while Feathers scarves are indeed a fair representation of what Australians have been knitting in the past five years, they’re in no way an example of the finest knitted garments this country can produce.

It’s just less than 4 weeks til this year’s Opera in the Domain event, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling on planning. Last year there were about a dozen Sydney knitters who got together beforehand to knit and enjoy the sunshine before the performance. I think this year, with advance notice, we can do even better!

Where: The Domain, Sydney
When: Saturday, February 2, 8pm

Let me know if you’re interested in coming and I’ll fill you in on the details closer to the date. Or if you’re on Ravelry, just leave a comment on my post about it over there…

Food movies. Mmm, food. (Superficiality and hedonism being my only defense against the fear of one’s own mortality.)