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I am here!
Well, sort-of here. I am back on my secondary backup power cord, which seems to have some sort of voltage issues and occasionally shorts out / makes my computer blink angrily at me. But it will keep me going until I decide what to do for a long-term fix.
Survived the hurricane, too! We didn't even lose power beyond a few flickers. Spent the evening in a hammock chair out on the screen porch, which I can definitely recommend as a venue for watching a storm. When poking around the neighborhood today, and the only extensive damage seems to be the old outhouse behind the crumbling 1920s farmhouse in the woods, which was crushed utterly by a falling tree.
I am also - okay, some of you may remember my post from about a year ago, when I made a post talking about over a dozen fake-news-topical-comedy type shows that I follow, some more casually than others. This week? The week when Tripoli fell to the rebels, New York City got hit by both an earthquake and a hurricane, Nick Clegg got hit by paintballs, and Toronto got covered in memorial chalk? All of them are currently on break. Yes, even the Canadian and Australian ones. (Well, the Bugle sort of had a new episode, if you count a half-awake episode that was mostly a pre-taped stand-up show and only vaguely 'current events'.) There is no-one to reassure me that it is okay to make cynical jokes about what has happened, and convince me that it will all be okay! Whatever shall I do?
So instead, I spent my hurricane listening to old episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and making a naalbinded hat:
Yes, I realize it looks like a large piece of pink-flavored candy corn, and I don't care. The triangularity is because the teacher who showed me naalbinding said that add 6 per round makes a flat disc (just like knitting and crochet) and she was wrong, wrong, wrong, as evidence by the cone I created. :P It still makes a fairly excellent hat though. It's pink because naalbinding uses short (18-30 inch) lengths of wool yarn, and that happens to be the colors of short pieces of wool yarn that I had.
I am, to be honest, kind of in love with naalbinding now! Granted I only know the one stitch, and there are many, many errors in that hat, but the fabric it makes is amazing. It's a lot more flexible and thinner than knitted or crochet, without having the texture problems that the others get at large gauge. I just... really like the way it feels and drapes and fits; it stretches and changes shape without having a lot of tension, so a slightly-small hat just sits firmly on my head without feeling like I have an elastic band tied around. Really, there's nothing about tension in it at all: it reminds me more than anything of a really old and really loved piece of knitting, that is all worn in and relaxed. Twice today I have gone "Where is my hat? I was finishing my hat! I know I had it right here!" only to have someone remind me I was wearing it, that is how comfy it is.
Also, wearing it makes me feel like a Viking explorer!
Naalbinding was taught as being kind of hard for beginners to get the hang of, but I suspect that is because there was a step, in the instructions, that basically consisted of "here the magic happens, if you did it just right!", and once I sat down and figured out what was actually going on topologically there, I was fine. No, the hard part was felting the ends together - you use short pieces of wool yarn so as you get to the end of one, you can splice the next one on by felting. I am ... not comfortable with felting, but I figured it out eventually with help from youtube, and after that it went great. (the only way I can come up with to give the instructions for the felted splice is "suck on it until nice and wet -- no teeth necessary -- then rub briskly with both hands until it feels quite firm to a gentel tug; at that point you can stick in right in"; I think I have gone too long without writing any fanfic.)
Anyway: yesterday before the hurricane there was yard sailing. because it had been too long! and there was one that was not cancelled, and I'm glad we went, because I forgot how awesome their book prices are:
6 books, $.15 hardcover/$.10 paperback:
Spacecraft and Spacemen to Color, Cut Out and Fly by Richard Wagner (1982); The Vanished Library by Luciano Canfora (1989); SAC: Men and Machines of our Strategic Air Command by C. B. Colby (1961; this is a kids' picture book that is pure cold war propaganda about how we can blow up the world. It is...terrible, mostly in that old sense of inspiring terror); Penny Nichols Finds a Clue and Penny Nichols and the Black Imp by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (1936, also including the front cover of Penny Nichols and the Knob Hill Mystery); Polly in Alaska by Lillian Roy (1926; 11th in the Polly Brewster series).
Total:80¢
Survived the hurricane, too! We didn't even lose power beyond a few flickers. Spent the evening in a hammock chair out on the screen porch, which I can definitely recommend as a venue for watching a storm. When poking around the neighborhood today, and the only extensive damage seems to be the old outhouse behind the crumbling 1920s farmhouse in the woods, which was crushed utterly by a falling tree.
I am also - okay, some of you may remember my post from about a year ago, when I made a post talking about over a dozen fake-news-topical-comedy type shows that I follow, some more casually than others. This week? The week when Tripoli fell to the rebels, New York City got hit by both an earthquake and a hurricane, Nick Clegg got hit by paintballs, and Toronto got covered in memorial chalk? All of them are currently on break. Yes, even the Canadian and Australian ones. (Well, the Bugle sort of had a new episode, if you count a half-awake episode that was mostly a pre-taped stand-up show and only vaguely 'current events'.) There is no-one to reassure me that it is okay to make cynical jokes about what has happened, and convince me that it will all be okay! Whatever shall I do?
So instead, I spent my hurricane listening to old episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and making a naalbinded hat:
Yes, I realize it looks like a large piece of pink-flavored candy corn, and I don't care. The triangularity is because the teacher who showed me naalbinding said that add 6 per round makes a flat disc (just like knitting and crochet) and she was wrong, wrong, wrong, as evidence by the cone I created. :P It still makes a fairly excellent hat though. It's pink because naalbinding uses short (18-30 inch) lengths of wool yarn, and that happens to be the colors of short pieces of wool yarn that I had.
I am, to be honest, kind of in love with naalbinding now! Granted I only know the one stitch, and there are many, many errors in that hat, but the fabric it makes is amazing. It's a lot more flexible and thinner than knitted or crochet, without having the texture problems that the others get at large gauge. I just... really like the way it feels and drapes and fits; it stretches and changes shape without having a lot of tension, so a slightly-small hat just sits firmly on my head without feeling like I have an elastic band tied around. Really, there's nothing about tension in it at all: it reminds me more than anything of a really old and really loved piece of knitting, that is all worn in and relaxed. Twice today I have gone "Where is my hat? I was finishing my hat! I know I had it right here!" only to have someone remind me I was wearing it, that is how comfy it is.
Also, wearing it makes me feel like a Viking explorer!
Naalbinding was taught as being kind of hard for beginners to get the hang of, but I suspect that is because there was a step, in the instructions, that basically consisted of "here the magic happens, if you did it just right!", and once I sat down and figured out what was actually going on topologically there, I was fine. No, the hard part was felting the ends together - you use short pieces of wool yarn so as you get to the end of one, you can splice the next one on by felting. I am ... not comfortable with felting, but I figured it out eventually with help from youtube, and after that it went great. (the only way I can come up with to give the instructions for the felted splice is "suck on it until nice and wet -- no teeth necessary -- then rub briskly with both hands until it feels quite firm to a gentel tug; at that point you can stick in right in"; I think I have gone too long without writing any fanfic.)
Anyway: yesterday before the hurricane there was yard sailing. because it had been too long! and there was one that was not cancelled, and I'm glad we went, because I forgot how awesome their book prices are:
6 books, $.15 hardcover/$.10 paperback:
Spacecraft and Spacemen to Color, Cut Out and Fly by Richard Wagner (1982); The Vanished Library by Luciano Canfora (1989); SAC: Men and Machines of our Strategic Air Command by C. B. Colby (1961; this is a kids' picture book that is pure cold war propaganda about how we can blow up the world. It is...terrible, mostly in that old sense of inspiring terror); Penny Nichols Finds a Clue and Penny Nichols and the Black Imp by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (1936, also including the front cover of Penny Nichols and the Knob Hill Mystery); Polly in Alaska by Lillian Roy (1926; 11th in the Polly Brewster series).
Total:80¢