How FREAKING COOL is this? Fake Steve links to this YouTube video of a toddler playing with an iPhone. That little girl has got it figured out in two seconds. Me, I’m trying to navigate this piece of crap with a tiny nubbin that doesn’t even register presses half the time, and she’s sittin’ there listening to Coldplay and swiping through her photo albums. Sheesh.
Month: July 2007
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More Ravelry press
Huh. Some technie nerds mentioned Ravelry and the initial comment response was pretty disparaging. Luckily some awesome knitters showed up to put them in their place!
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Weasley’s Ice Cream Van!
The SMH has in interview with Daniel Radcliffe in which he mentions Rupert Grint’s ice cream van: “I told him you’ve got to get it all stocked up by the time we’re all on Harry Potter 6, so he can drive us in and give us ice-creams every morning.” Suddenly my own commute seems so boring!
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Fudge Hat
Is anyone sensing a theme this week?
Somebody made a lime green felted bowler as part of a Cornelius Fudge costume. AWESOME. In related news, the Snook and I hit The Costume Shop yesterday to finalize our outfits for this weekend. I found an awesome bikerish jacket that I think is going to be perfect for Tonks. (While the movie did not sway me towards purple hair, it definitely inspired me to take her in a more punkish direction.) The Snook also got a few Mundungus effects. Which reminds me: Do any of you Sydneysiders have any really gaudy costume jewelry you could loan us for the day? We’re looking for both “royal jewel” type stuff and also “evil goth” stuff. Please let me know if you can help us out! -
HP Stuff
Incendio!
So far I’m 35% of the way through the Order of the Phoenix videogame. Sadly, I’ve also run into two bugs so far. The first was when I was unable to get out of the Marauder’s Map screen. After two minutes of fruitlessly pushing buttons, the Snook had to look online and verify that it was impossible. After a restart, the game (and Map) worked perfectly. The other bug was during the task where you’re supposed to help Colin Creevy get his camera down off the roof. There’s a set way you’re supposed to go about it, but I somehow managed to get up on the roof from a different direction. Without thinking, I used a “depulso” charm to push the camera down to the ground. When I got down there, I found I was unable to pick it up and give it to Colin. All I could do was “accio” it around the place. Eventually I had to turn to the Internet again to discover my mistake. If you come at the camera from the proper side, Hermione yells out for you to use “wingardium leviosa” to levitate it down from them. I ended up having to quit and restart the task over. Bad task design, Electronic Arts! Other than that, I’m having a lot of fun running around Hogwarts and lighting things on fire. (“Incendio” is my favorite spell.) I also like that as you discover new things, you unlock prizes in the Room of Rewards. These prizes basically turn out to be little documentary snippets about the making of the game, most of which involve interviews with the movie cast (since so many of them provided voices for the game). I’m just working up my nerve now to head to the Owlery and make out with Cho… -
No car, please.
According to this article, you’re statistically safer living in a “dangerous” neighborhood close to work than you are living in a “safe” suburb where you have to commute. (Violent crime being much, much rarer than car accidents.) Hmmm, maybe Redfern isn’t looking so bad!
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Ravelry Waiting List
Yay! Those of you patiently waiting for your Ravelry invite can now check your position on the list…
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More Than Meets the Eye
From the front, it’s just a normal grey jumper with a patch of stripes. But from the side… suddenly you’re an autonomous robot life form from Cybertron! (More photos available on Flickr and Ravelry.)I’m proud to report that this is the first jumper that Snookums actually requested and helped design. Somehow he saw some shadow knitting and asked whether it would be possible to knit the Autobots logo onto the front of a jumper. I pondered this. Most examples of shadow knitting are scarves where you’re looking at the design from the bottom up (like in the Dark Mark Illusion Scarf). The Snook didn’t like the idea of having to do a back-bend for people to see the image, though. So then I toyed with the idea of knitting his jumper sideways from cuff-to-cuff… but that tends to make for a rather shapeless garment, and not something that looks very good on a guy. That left knitting the logo sideways and then rotating it ninety-degrees before incorporating it into the jumper. So that’s what I did. (Read past the jump for a link to download my chart.)
The pattern I settled on was Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “Seamless Hybrid” from Knitting Without Tears, mostly because I’d never done saddle shoulders before. I was also greatly inspired by Brooklyn Tweed‘s gorgeous version. (I nicked his idea for doing contrasting hems.) The yarn is Filatura di Crosa Zara in #1469 (Dark Grey) and #1494 (Light Grey). I used about 12 of the main colour and 2 of the contrast. I experimented with different ways of “mounting” the shadow knitting, and ultimately what worked best was just sewing it in as I went along. (Which meant that I was knitting back and forth and leaving a “window” for the patch, so there was definitely purling involved.)
Okay, so the final verdict. I guess I’d give this about a 9 out of 10 rating. The shadow knitting worked great, and the Zara is a dream to knit with. (It also feels incredibly soft to wear, which is very important for the Snook, who finds most wool prickly.) I’m just not 100% happy with the fit of the shoulders, though. My gauge was off from Elizabeth’s sample so I had to scale it up a little bit, and I’m just not sure her percentages for the saddles work as well this way. I think once it has a wash and a press it’ll look better though. (That’ll also help with the way the patch slightly pulls in a bit.) The Snook is happy and he has a new jumper to wear with a few weeks of winter left, so that’s all that matters!
Download my chart: Here’s a PDF file of the chart Snookums made for me. Start in the lower right and follow as you would any other knitting chart. If you’ve never done shadow or illusion knitting before, basically you’re just knitting 2-row stocking stitch stripes. Nothing difficult there, right? Well, occasionally – wherever there’s a dash on that chart – you knit instead of purl on the second rows. (So you’ll have garter stitch in that spot instead of stockinette.) And that’s it!
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Sassy!
“Cute Band Alert: How Sassy Magazine Created a New Sex Object.” Man, I really miss Sassy. See also: “How Sassy (Should Have) Changed My Life.”
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Pacey Sighting
We have a confirmed Pacey sighting! *sigh* Why don’t they put him and Clooney in a movie together?
