That was a hell of a comment spam attack, huh? Assholes. Snookums and I are working on a prevention system. (Every IP address was a different open proxy.) I’m still cleaning up the aftermath. The “recent comments” list will look funny for a little while.
Month: September 2004 (page 6 of 6)
Tales of the Weird
I stepped out of the break room after lunch today to be confronted by the weirdest little man: he had a ratty, pointy face; he was sporting a massive comb-over; and he was wearing an extremely fluffy white angora sweater. As my eyes adjusted to the cloud of fuzziness that was his torso, I realized with amazement that it was a woman’s angora sweater. It had puffy shoulders and everything! It was like meeting a 60-year-old Ed Wood. He started mumbling to me about angora so I took him over to the case where we keep the balls. (They’re expensive so we keep ’em under glass.) He started telling me about his beloved sweater and how he bought it for five dollars at an op shop, and how it’s his fondest wish to have another knit just like it. I went to get Losh, the other manager. “Losh,” I said. “I have a complete loony over there who wants to get a 100% angora sweater knit and I don’t know what to quote him.” So she came over to deal with him. After much hemming and hawing, she quoted him a price of $700. That’s $500 for the wool and another $200 for the knitting. Seven hundred dollars for a sweater, of which we’d need 50% upfront. Undeterred, he picked out a pattern and Losh set about measuring him. Afterwards he disappeared to “go get the money.” “He’ll never come back,” I said. “He probably just wanted some attention.” Lo and behold, an hour later he was back with the deposit. I couldn’t believe it. I deal with some characters, I tell you…
Holy crap! Craigslist Sydney has finally launched! Not much there yet but hopefully it’ll grow. I was surprised to see a link about US voter registration on the home page, but the explanation was delightful: “We’re including a link to this page on our non US sites just to show that we’re working hard to restore democracy to the US.” Brilliant.
Anybody still looking for a last minute wedding gift for my sister? She’d love a genuine Ultimate Warrior WWF Championship belt, I swear. Hee. (Link courtesy of Chandler.)
Bring on the election.
I was chatting to an old grandma at the shop today and she mentioned that she was from Arizona. “Oh, nice!” I love meeting fellow Americans. (Well, the nice ones anyway.) She said she’d just been reading about the Republican National Convention in the newspaper. Not wanting to say anything too controversial – at least, not before she’d paid for her wool – I just kinda nodded and said I’d seen something about it on the news. “You know,” she said, “I’m a registered Republican but I believe in voting for the man, not the party. And I’m not voting for that man again!” I broke into a big grin. Right on, lady! Later that afternoon a woman from New York recognized my accent and blurted out that she hoped I’d registered to vote. I told her the story of the Arizona lady and she was delighted. So party on, Republicans. The more you tighten your grip, the more moderate voters will slip through your fingers…
I’ve been obsessed for weeks with this 127 Print Italian wool that we’ve got at the shop so I finally bought a few balls last weekend and knitted it up into a scarf. Here’s Snookums modelling the finished product. Isn’t it pretty? The colors just come out like that when you knit it. I tried to combat the dreaded stockinette-curl with a border of garter stitch and regular thin garter stitch bands between the color stripes, but the darn thing still has a tendency to roll into a tube. *shrug* I still like it.
Notes: For those wishing to do something similar, I used three balls in total. Casted on 35 stitches on 6mm needles and did a few rows of garter stitch before starting the pattern. I worked out that I there was enough space between color patches to do three rows of stockinette, then four of garter, and then back to stockinette. It only got irregular where I changed balls.
I’m fairly certain that everybody that wants a Gmail account already has one, but if you don’t, just leave a comment. I’ve got five more invites to give out.