long weekend

if you saw the post with the quiz in it (you can find a link to the quiz here), i didnt like the picture so i took it down, but if anyone cares, i am, apparently, a 'knitting adventurer'. its true too.

anyway, i am busy at the moment trying to get together all the bits and pieces for our camping trip this weekend. we havent been camping in ages, so we are looking forward to it. we are going to wyangala waters near cowra, the reason being that miss possum and i have entered a yard dog trial* at the morongla show on the monday of this long weekend, and given i will be in and out of the ring in less than 10 minutes, and you only get one go at it, we thought we might as well go find some nice little spot under a tree to hang out for a few days as well.

if any canberrans happen to be up that way, do come say hi! (its halfway between boorowa and cowra). speaking of boorowra, the irish wool fest is on the sunday and is worth a visit as well, they have a scarf competition there, and there is more dog fun in the park with a flyball competition, but we arent entering this year.

so, have a nice relaxing long weekend ( what are we celebrating again?) and see you next week sometime.

k xx
* yard dog trial = bizarre affair where my crazy koolie 'possum' works sheep in and out of pens, through gates and up a race while i pretend to look like i know what im doing and yell stupid things like 'round' 'here' and 'go way up'. dont ask me why im doing it, the potential for humiliation is staggering!

the problem of 'friends' in a postmodern world

i was at uni yesterday talking to the good doctor k, and she was telling me about the problem with people wanting to add themselves as her friend etc on facebook when she may actually know and dislike said person. what does one do? how long can one ignore this imposter? and how are we to deal with this particularly post modern situation where we make these web communities in order to reach out from our isolation, only to find ourselves creating virtual gated communities?

it was funny that dr k should be talking about this yesterday given a dilemma i have encountered with ravelry. firstly, its gated, and im totally, completely and utterly anti-elitist, but i do realise its still in beta, theres server bandwidth to consider, and theres also the marketing angle, where you create desire for something by keeping it a little bit hidden for a while. still, its weird being part of something that other non-members cant look at, so i hope they open it up as soon as is practicable.

then, theres the friend issue. i added some people to my ravelry friends, people i have actually met and some i have communicated with via blogs. i stayed at 6 friends for a while (like a whole 24 hours), because they were the only ones i felt comfortable adding, given that people are told you are being added as a friend. but 6 is a very little amount of friends in ravelry world, and then theres the fact that people here are friends to the extent that i want to gawk at their projects and steal their ideas (again, a very post modern notion of friendship, i suspect). anyway, today i have been adding people whose blogs i have read, or who i know about from other peoples blogs, but i have not really communicated with them much myself.

so im feeling a little bit uneasy about it, and im sure they will be like, well who is this person? but at least in ravelry its all about the yarn, and yarn does not discriminate.

i hope.

the puzzled
k (i need an emoticon for 'puzzled')

sock challenge

firstly, very impressed with ravelry. only had a little bit of time to play but its a very well designed site. looking forward to adding lots of projects to my queue!

secondly, the southern summer of socks personal challenge.

some of the other ones i have read have been very ambitious! i have a few simple goals

1. finish the second socks of the two pairs i have on the go
2. work out how to do socks with a fibonnaci sequence
3. make some monkey/embossed leaves/jaywalker and/or lace socks
4. try the magic loop technique
5. dispel ladders for ever!! (ok, this one doesnt really count).

my reward is either a skein of lornas laces or koigu, and yes, it will be in some shade of red!

k xx

i'm in!

this was waiting in my inbox this morning:

>Hey there,
frecklegirl has invited you to Ravelry!
"Here you go! Thanks for your interest in our little site.
Let me know if you have any questions or problems!
Jess"

of course, someone is working at home today and needs the computer, and i have a conference to go to tomorrow, so it will be a few days before i get anything up there, but my user name is kms anyway.

very excited!

k xx

too many books

this is the pile i am working my way through this week:



you will be pleased to know that there is a link between this pile and knitting. see the book on top, that's foucault's 'discipline and punish'. it talks about the history of crime and of incarceration, there is a chapter in there im using a lot about the creation and function of delinquency as a tool of ruling class 'othering' and surveillance. and of course, he gives an excellent history of the prison as an institution, in which he talks about the panopticon, bentham's ultimate prison building. anyway, because i am reading this, something caught my eye on bells blog, and this was the link to The Panopticon in her list of blogs. i'd never noticed it before, so off i went, and have discovered franklin, who i think is hilarious. so there you go, not even six degrees of separation between foucault, the pensky file and knitting.

back to the issue of books, i mentioned that i might be checking out some book stores this weekend up in sydney. we started at borders in pitt st, i was a bit tentative about borders because i am, for the most part, an anti-multinational (dont get me wrong, i am a big fan of the espresso frappacinno at starbucks, and i am not a buy-australian-nationalistic type, but i do try and support the little guy where possible). its hard tho when you walk in and they have EVERYTHING you could ever want in the way of books, and they're cheaper than anywhere else. i had already decided however, that i would only buy a knitting book from here, because i knew i was going elsewhere, and you dont want to blow it all at the first shop, do you?

anyway, im happy to report that borders let me down. perhaps their store in canberra is better in this department, but there was nothing in the way of knitting books worth buying, especially considering i am only in the market for sock books, and i dont mean daggy old socks either (im talking 'vintage socks', or 'sensational socks', or 'interweave socks').

so nothing there.

then we went to kinokunya. in my mind, this is the pick of sydney book stores at the moment. this was going to be my fiction-only purchase, but i wandered round to the philosophy section and they had some zizek and lacan there that are hard to find and i held them and turned them over and they were $60 each, and i know they give me a headache when i read them, and i can probly get them on interlibrary loan anyway, so i put them back. it was hard, but i did it. anyway, i thought abbeys would have a better theory section.

so i made do with just one novel. i usually only buy novels for christmas, given every spare minute when im not reading foucault, zizek or lacan, should be spent on knitting, but here i was surrounded by hundreds, no thousands, of fantastically sparkley covered novels, and i got completely and utterly overwhelmed. so i limited myself to one:



alexis wright's carpentaria, and made note of all the ones i am coming back for in a couple of months.

then we stopped for coffee and went on to abbeys, with which i was bitterly disappointed. they do have the whole freud library, and they had one volume of lacan and a cute little paperback of 'history of sexuality' but i am already reading the library copy, so why buy it? their non-fiction is pretty good but only if its new, they dont seem to be stocking nearly as much cultural or social theory as they used to. like, no zizek. i know hes a crazy yugoslav communist post-structuralist, but still....not one.

so i left there empty handed. jo bought some very groovy old style star trek comics at galaxy then we dawdled down the hill to cockle bay wharf where we ate chocolate.



i did buy something there for trent:

(you have to go the coffee blog to open the box and see what $20 buys you at lindt. also i made a coffe blog button. i have gone button mad. did you notice?!)

then we caught the train home. i am disappointed in myself. once upon a time i could easily have spent hundreds of dollars in book stores. i could have done it yesterday. how is it possible to be so overwhelmed with choice, you just cant choose?! it was a lovely weekend tho, faheem's was fantastic as always, the company was brilliant, i am feeling better about things all round, tho still not sure how to deal with Someone at work - perhaps by doing nothing?

but in the meantime i am only 200 people away from getting my ravelry invite, i have a list of sock challenges to write, and a section called 'the repressive hypothesis' to read, so i think i have enough to be getting on with.

love
k xx
ps. carpentaria (yes jo i did start it!) is brilliant.

antsy

yes yes i am a ravelry tragic too:

Found you!

* You signed up on July 15, 2007
* You are #16844 on the list.
* 1040 people are ahead of you in line.
* 17658 people are behind you in line.
* 45% of the list has been invited so far

only a thousand people ahead of me, looking good!

of course i have no idea what i will do when i get my invite. i have enough trouble putting anything interesting on this blog, let alone finding time to knit stuff to show other people.

anyone else suffer from knit/blog envy?!

meanwhile, i have a busy weekend of socialising planned - The Other Half has gone to The Can this weekend to judge a flyball comp and im not going. i am helping jo buy a tent this morning instead, then hanging out with mandy and her dogs for a while (we might do some training, depends if the weather holds) then we are going up to The Big Smoke to have dinner with dave at Faheems. ahhhhhh faheeeeeeemmmmms.... and then tomorrow perhaps another visit to the lindt shop and some book stores i think. so i will have no reason to be whingy anymore, promise!

k :)

shameless cross promotion

so, there is a knitpicks comp where you can win heaps of stuff, so i spent some time just now figuring out how to put the button up without hotlinking. it was tricky, but its there. only thing is, i am not buying anything, cos i bought 4 pairs of dpns at tapestry craft not that long ago, and in about a month its my birthday and i have told everyone who is listening and even those who arent, that the one and only present i want is a deluxe set of options. so i am not buying anything. sorry. but i have the button up. does that count?

also, here is the link to the fantastic southern summer of socks site (try saying that with a mouth full of weatbix), which i am very excited about and cant wait to have a button for! it will be my first KAL. i only hope i can keep up the pace, there are some formidable knitters out there. im scared.

today, i was reminded that there are some nice people in the world, and they are mostly knitters. thanks guys ((((big hug)))).

(snip) yesterday i wrote something here about gossip and friendship and academia which i woke up suddenly and decided to delete, largely cos its possible that some people from said academy may in fact read this. suffice to say people arent always as they seem (/snip)

and then there are other people who give selflessly of their time and advice for no real benefit of their own meaning that today, it was worth leaving home.

k xx

walkin' the plank

just when you think all hope is lost, someone sends you a link to something hilarious. did you know it was International Talk like a Pirate Day?

who needs a revolution when there's swashbuckling to be had. let alone the pirate knitting. something to match the scarf spidey?!

thanks so much for the kind words from my previous post, there has been a lot going on around me that isnt directly about me, but its affecting people i care about, and making something we usually do for fun not fun, and that affects me, and i tend to get angry as my first response and then when the anger runs out i am at a bit of a loss. the last few weeks i have not been wanting to leave the house or talk to people much, it just seems like too much effort, and i mentioned this on the weekend as though it was normal and it was brought to my attention that it is not, really. i forget sometimes that i have a bit of history of not reacting 'normally' to the rest of the world, and when you spend most of your time in front of a computer on your own, you tend to think how you are feeling is normal. so a reality check was in order.

apart from the horror of that video, yesterday was a good day for that, because i went down to nowra where my lovely students restored my faith in humanity somewhat, and today, despite some early hair-pulling, i have managed to write a few pages to add to the pensky file.

and despite my desire not to, i have made arrangements to meet up with some people at uni tomorrow because its good for me and because one person is in more need of comfort and support than i am, and it will make me feel better despite myself.

and if all else fails you can just talk like a pirate!

aarrrr!
k xx

a little bit bent outta shape....

anyone know what this is?


yes, thats right, one straight knit pick dpn. one bent one:


i have no idea how this happened but am glad they come in packs of five. does anyone else have this issue with knitpicks?

on a rather more sombre note, i have been feeling a little like the world is a shit hole of a place recently, nothing specific, just people being their usual crap selves to each other.

then, trent shows me this:

liberty, freedom, democracy

why isnt there a riot? why are people clapping? what sort of sick, f*cked up world have we become?

k :(

the pensky file

i started back at work on the t-word* yesterday. i havent decided on a final title - i knew someone who called hers Fred until it was finished - so yesterday mine became known as The Pensky File:


for those of you watched seinfeld you will know that this means i now have a very well organised t-word.

seriously, i read over it and am pretty happy with where its at and with what i still have to do. it feels manageable, even doable.

but i have been out of the loop for a while with the book and there is some reading i need to catch up on. these are on the agenda for today:


just a few light pieces.

on a more interesting front, the bendi/patonyle sock is coming along, i have turned the heel using bendi:


it knits up nicely, especially on these fabulous knitpicks, but it was very hard to pick up and knit, firstly cos its solid black, and secondly cos its a bit strandy, if you know what i mean. i am still experimenting with methods for getting rid of ladders, which threw my rounds out a bit because i dont usually use a marker for socks but i am going to have to in future.

and i am bored with stocking stitch socks and want to do something with a pattern in it now. monkeys, or leaves, or fake cables or something.

anyway, back to the pensky file.

k xx

* t-word: new descriptor, substitute for the thing that can not be named.

the other side of monday

here we are then, wednesday upon us already and piles of essays to mark and i am irritated that i am not working on the thesis yet. this is a good sign i think - perhaps my brain is on its way back. i have also been back to the gym after an enforced short break while the book pressure was on. that felt good too.

i have some lovely pictures of our weekend in kioloa but dont ask about the flyball. the racing was a debacle. our team had to withdraw after only one race. enough said.

moving right along.

the weather was divine the friday when we got there, after checking into our little cabin:


we headed straight for the beach:



the dogs love it here, they get to run around like mad things:


and have toys thrown into the ocean to chase:


the people had some fun too, here is trent with our two, jem and possum:


and the kelpie owners plus one:


speaking of obeying the cattle dog:

hmmm.

in knitting news the bendi/patonyle sock is progressing nicely. on the main leg part, i got sick of seeing ladders appear again so i tried the shuffling around of stitches so that the join was never in the same place and this worked a treat:


the red circle indicates where there were ladders, after that, none.

i am not sure how to continue with it now that i am in the decrease for calf part, conceptually it remains beyond me. a fellow knitter/herding friend of mine sent me some sock books she bought and doesnt like and they dont have great patterns in them, but there is one thats about knitting socks on two circs. i really think this is the way to go but i cant get my head around how to do it. i need a visual demonstration but will i ever get to an snb again......

i have so many socks to knit its not funny. i am looking forward to hearing more about rosered and bells summer of socks idea. subset: "socks on two circs" would be great!!

k xx