What’s happening to the bees? That’s really weird. It reminds me of something a Bond villain would do, destroy the world’s bees to threaten the food supply. (Unless, of course, we pay him ONE MEEEELLION DOLLARS!) But seriously, that sucks about the bees.
How to Look Like a Jerk-Ass American in a Foreign Country:
And you wonder why some of us pretend to be Canadian…
Lesbian koalas. Well, it is Mardi Gras…
The Great British Venn Diagram. Surprisingly useful to us geographically-challenged Yanks. Plus I’ve just always liked Venn diagrams.
Oscar Night: Two upsets so far! That’s spread the field a fair bit…
More than four hours later: Congratulations to Kent Bailey! Kent got an amazing 11 out of 12 correct, only missing the clean sweep on Best Foreign Film. (What an upset, huh?) He was also only one person off the Dead Person total, so any way you slice it, this was Kent’s year. Thanks to everybody else who played along (and who counted obits for me). See you next year!
I was rather quiet this past week, wasn’t I? As some of you have worked out, I was hosting my dear friend Sal Scherer and her boyfriend Tom from Chicago. They got in on Monday night, and on Tuesday I tramped them all over Sydney. It was perfect weather, and the fact that there was a big-ass boat in town added to the festive atmosphere. Sal and I even took a spin on the Harbour Jet Boat. (I’ll post a photo of that once Sal scans it.) Wednesday they hit the Aquarium and the Rocks. Thursday they left for New Zealand and I went to the Sound of Music thing. (Nun.) As you can see, it amounted to a pretty tiring week. I had four days in a row of getting less than six hours sleep… which put me in little mood for blogging. I’ve had a nice quiet weekend of napping and knitting though, so I’m back on track. A couple photos:
It’s done. It’s really and truly done. After an aborted attempt at sewing in the zipper last weekend, I hit upon the idea of sewing down some ribbon along the inside of each front to hide the cut edges and provide a more stable foundation for the zipper. So I got four meters of ribbon from the shop (which turned out to be the perfect amount) and got to work. Unfortunately the Cursed Nature of this project meant that first I had to do things completely wrong. I sewed down one ribbon with the sewing machine (without pinning), then sewed down the other (after pinning). I’m sure some of you can see the problem already. I tried it on and groaned. The side I hadn’t pinned had stretched at least an inch or so in the process of sewing, so it was all ripply and crap-looking. Why the hell didn’t I think to measure and make sure the two pieces of ribbon were the same size? Because of the Curse, obviously. So I ripped out the ripply side and then wet it down for the night, hoping it would spring back into shape. (It did.) The next day I measured out the ribbon, pinned it down, and sewed it into place. It looked good! I then used the rest of the ribbon to face all the seams inside the garment: around the arms, the shoulders, and the hood/neck steeks. Lastly, I sewed in the goddamn zipper. It’s done! This sucker took me exactly SEVEN MONTHS to finish. I learned so much along the way! I learned how Debbie Bliss patterns can SUCK; I learned how photos that don’t show vital parts of the garment – like the collar – are a big ol’ WARNING SIGN; I learned that steeking saves you knitting time but doesn’t necessarily cut down on finishing. And you know what? After all that, the bastards will probably reject it for the Show. That’d be just my luck.
Didn’t Snookums do a good job of taking Interweave-esque photos?
Speedcluster. It’s sorta like the card game Speed crossed with Solitaire crossed with Tetris. Or something. I’ve managed a high score of 122,150 so far. (Tip: It really helps to play with a real mouse as opposed to a track pad.) Basically, you move the cards from the bottom row onto the falling columns of cards by placing one number higher or lower. I think making a long chain gives you a bonus. I have no idea what the whole “pass” thing does. I wish they’d put the instructions in English!
I’m at the Sing-a-long Sound of Music with just about every gay in Sydney. There are nuns, Nazis, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes…
The Next Morning: Oh, my aching head. Every time I closed my eyes all night, all I could hear was “DOE – A DEER – A FEMALE DEER!” Here’s some more information on the show for those that are interested, and Amy will no doubt have some pictures up on Flickr soon.
This morning I helped an Australian customer in the shop who wanted to have a photograph turned into a cross stitch. The photograph was of the World Trade Center. (Not smoking or anything – thank GOD – apparently they’d taken it on vacation the year before.) I was a little stunned at first… but then I remembered that we have and sell tapestries with the Titanic on them. Give it another twenty years and nobody will bat an eye, I guess. Still, who hangs something like that in their living room?
I wonder if they call them freedom knots?
My name is Kris. I’ve been blogging since the 90’s. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I spent most of my career in the tech industry.
No AI used in writing this blog, ever. 100% human-generated.
Woot, my knee-jerk don’t-overthink-it pub-quiz answer was Iran which seems to be [✓]. I ‘knew’ it was more populous than…
Congrats and to many more 🙌🏽
My home economics teacher taught us to use “J cloths” as press cloths. (Cellulose cleaning cloths). The upside of using…
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