web-goddess

Great article and interview with my favorite Chicago improv-artist (and Buckeye) Tara D. And she worked in a Boone’s Farm reference! If you are in Chicago, you must go see one of her shows.

Yay, Helga’s getting married! I’m very happy for her. I remember meeting her that first week of freshman year and not being quite sure what to make of this stern sounding German girl from Ohio. It only took a week or two to realize that she was actually wickedly funny and had no problem playing the straight man in our schemes. I remember one night we had her read us this list someone had e-mailed me of “Ways to Torment Your Roommate” (back in the days when people actually read e-mail forwards) and it took hours and by the end Liz and I were just crying with laughter. One of my best college memories… Congrats, Helga! (Link courtesy of Nora.)

Neat! Check out this London Poverty Map from 1898-1899. It turns out that the area I lived in as a student was seriously posh. Hammersmith, the area I lived in with the Snook, looks more like well-to-do farmland. I’d look up the area where the Snook first lived in London – because if it was that ghetto in 1999, it had to have been the ghetto a hundred years earlier – but that site is slow and I’m going to bed.

It’s a man, baby! Dude, Megan Gale is normally super-beautiful, but she totally looks like a tranvestite in this Logie photo. Her hands are gi-normous! And she has an Adam’s apple! No wonder she’s flipping off the photographer.

I was interviewing another American chick at the shop the other day and I asked her if she was a “dualie” (meaning dual citizen) yet. “No, not yet,” she said. “I’ve still got another year of residence to go. What about you?” And I suddenly realized that, yeah, I’m probably eligible for Australian citizenship. So I came home and double-checked my passport. Yep, I’m a permanent resident who’s been here for more than four years. I surfed on over to the Australian Citizenship website to check out the details. “Whaddaya know… I can apply online!” So I did. Fifteen minutes and one-hundred-and-twenty bucks later, Kris is going to be an Australian! Okay, so I still have to go to an interview and show them that I can speak English and I know the principles of mateship and the Australian way of life (it’s all about lamb, right?), but it’s pretty much a done deal. In a month or two, I’ll get to attend a ceremony (ooh, please let Clover be there!) and say the magic words and get a tree or something and yadda yadda yadda, I’ll be ‘Strine. (Don’t worry; I’ve already been to one so I know what to do.) You are, of course, all invited to participate in this momentous occasion. And then, you guessed it, we will be throwing the mother of all winter barbies, the Web-Goddess Becomes a Right Aussie Sheila Party. Details will follow once we know the date.

AskMetaFilter comes through with ideas for labelling your food in communal food storage situations. Some of those are pretty funny. My favorite is the guy who put “MILK EXPERIMENT” on his milk cartons.

The weekends go so fast. Saturday the Snook and I went on a major hike from our place through the city, across the Bridge, and all the way to North Sydney. Along the way we stopped at Kings Comics to pick up our free comic books and then at Giordano so I could buy a pink cotton cardigan I’ve had my eye on. Our eventual goal was Dave’s Home Brew so the Snook could pick up supplies. It took us about two hours all together and by the end of it, my hamstring was hurting pretty badly. I relaxed at home in a hot bath with Epsom salts. I also successfully shortened the Looking Glass Jumper by about six inches. (The yarn seems to have dropped considerably, and it was just way too long. Sunday I worked on the Snook’s cotton jumper while he brewed up a British bitter. We also went for a nice jog around Pyrmont. (My leg was feeling much better.) I made some roasted vegetable soup and we watched several episodes of Buffy. Is it time to go back to work already?!

The past two months have been a real eye-opener, as far as the Australian craft industry is concerned. It all started when I got contacted by Better Homes and Gardens to help them out with a knitting pattern. Apparently there’s quite a lot of sharing that goes on between the international BHG’s, and the Australian branch had a French knitting pattern that they wanted to feature. The yarn was obscure though and they needed a local equivalent. They gave me the details and I worked that Superbaby was probably the best substitute. They thanked me and said that they’d list us as the stockist for the yarn. When the magazine came out, the level of interest caught us completely by surprise. I had no idea how many people would want to make something just because it was featured in a TV show’s magazine. I mean, it’s a nice pattern but it’s not the be-all and end-all of scarves in the world. Yet still, here they came streaming in the door, clutching their issues and asking for the Superbaby. I was astounded by how many of them didn’t even want to deviate from the colour used in the photograph (which was of the French scarf; it wasn’t even the same yarn!). We also had a number of people ring us up to ask about the pearl beads used to embellish the scarf; I told person after person that we didn’t supply the beads, that the stockist was clearly listed at the end of the article after our name. (It was an American company with no Australian presence. Go figure.) I was just left reeling by how much power this one publication has to generate sales. I mean, we never see this soft of wave for patterns from Creative Knitting or Yarn. I guess Australians just really, really love their lifestyle programs.

And the saga continues! BHG next wanted me to help them out with Australian equivalents for an elaborate crocheted blanket (done all in French yarns). I worked it all out for them, but warned that it was going to be a pretty expensive item to knit. (It used wool, cottons, metallics, and mohair.) That issue went on sale two days ago. I didn’t expect anywhere near the same response we’d had with the scarf; crochet isn’t as popular and just from looking at it, you can tell it’s going to be pricey. Yet we’ve had half a dozen calls about it already. Today I actually totalled up the price of all the yarns needed – $630. Isn’t that nuts? (Not to mention the fact that they neglected to print the quantities needed for each yarn, so everyone who’s even remotely curious about it has to ring us to get the bad news.)

I just kind of find the whole experience a little disappointing. Better Homes and Gardens clearly has a huge amount of influence and power over the weekend crafters of Australia. I want to help them to use this power for good, not evil; to feature knitting and crochet patterns that will teach people to be creative, not to slavishly copy something they saw on telly. I’m just disheartened to see so many people that clearly want to make something, to craft something with their own hands, yet who lack the creativity or confidence to do something other than what everybody else in the world is doing.

I rang up my hairdresser Paige the other day to discover that she’d had a “vision” for my next hairdo. It’s still blonde and short, but now it has pale pink and purply-chocolate streaks through it. Check it out. We’re calling it the “Neopolitan.” (Hey, if I can’t eat it, I may as well have it on my head!)

Monkeys in cowboy hats. I’m the #2 result, baby!