A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I don’t get to knit much except during those times when there’s not much else to do that requires my hands — so I knit when the PC locks up (which lately is a lot and knitting keeps me from trying to get it to work by pressing keys, thus making it worse) or when watching TV or DVDs, when we have company and just sitting and talking.  But somehow, to my surprise I managed to finish a few things that have been hanging around.  You know how it is — a bedroom project, a living room project, an office project, and one that fits in the purse for travel.

First, I finally finished these socks made with Red Heart’s Heart & Sole with Aloe yarn. As usual with self-stripping yarn they’re fraternal socks. The colors aren’t quite right but they’re a beautiful orange, burnt red, purple, brown, yellowish that reminds me of desert sunsets. They’re just my basic sock pattern only with a broken rib pattern on the leg section. Only since I really don’t like doing purl, the purl band only shows on the inside and the outside has some interesting bumps and texture that I really liked.

Next, I blogged about knitting the Baby Fan Mitts of a Paton’s Silk Bamboo yarn in a previous post. The pattern is a free Ravelry download designed by Morgan Wolf that you can find here. The pattern is very clear and the mitts are beautiful and dressy without being too fussy.

I had plenty of the yarn left over so I decided to make a matching cowl to go with the mitts. I used a pattern from one of Barbara Walkers’ books and started knitting. It took a few tries to get what I wanted but here it is drying. (Don’t let the color fool you — this is the same yarn as the Baby Fan Mitts and in the same color — for some reason I just couldn’t get the same color in the pictures. Actual color is a very pretty blue-teal — closer to the mitts photo than the cowl one.

I think it came out pretty good and I’m pleased with it. I’ll try to get a picture with me wearing it at some point. I’ve been thinking of writing the pattern up and posting it but don’t know if there would be much interest. Would there? Should I?

But because now I didn’t have anything but sweaters on the needles, I needed to start another pair of socks. These are a beautiful green/gold/red/yellowy tweed using Paton’s Kroy Socks yarn.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with them. So, I’m making a plain foot and will do something with the leg portion when I get there. I’m debating making these as a Christmas gift for someone so I’ll have to see how the foot looks before deciding how to do the leg. Right now I’m thinking a plain 2×2 knit purl ribbing or some other simple ribbing pattern.

I’m rather pleased with myself at doing so much over the past two months. But then the fibro has been pretty bad and knitting is something I can do even if I can’t really think straight as long as it’s just plain knit and socks are mostly that. Luckily when you’ve been knitting for years even using double pointed needles to do socks is second nature.

I signed up for the Rockin’ Sock Club by Blue Moon Fibers this year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I finally managed to hit the enrollment period with the money to do it (just got paid for a freelance gig). I’m really looking forward to getting the first shipment of yarn and patterns. If I can keep up with the socks from the club I should manage to keep my feet warm next winter and hopefully a couple of the pattern will make great gifts for those who keep asking me for socks for those family members who keep hinting for socks.

Today has been a real challenge. Most of last week I kept having lower back pain on top of the usual fibromyalgia issues. It was constant pain with, now and then, a bad twinge. Finally, today I just couldn’t take it anymore and took a muscle relaxer.

I figured I’d been thinking it was kidneys and drinking water like crazy but it still hurt and every bend and lift was…let’s just say not fun. So, the muscle relaxer. It helped. So, I’m guessing it was the muscles in my lower back all the time and while I was trying to take it easy lifting anything I was probably just making it worse ignoring it. I’m a bit floaty but the pain is now in that “over there” place. You know — you’re in pain and you know it but it’s like one step to the side of you so while it’s here, it’s over there and ignorable.

Meanwhile, we’ve got all the ornaments off the tree and packed. We’ve managed to get all the branches smooched together. Next we need to take it apart and wrap it up for storage. That’s the sticky point with my back as it is. Guess that waits a bit until either I feel better or Hyperion tackles it on his own.

I really hate it when the spoon just get all used up while I still have a full TO DO list and lots of day left over. Meanwhile, I’m doing mindless knitting on my sock — the stocking knit bit in the foot so I’ve got 3 more inches before I have to think about the heel.

I really need many more spoons in my life. So much time so little energy and so few hours not in pain. Okay, I’m whinging again but darn it sometimes you just have to get it out so you can move on.

Okay, this has nothing to do with muscle pain, but a lot to do with mental anguish. Gayle and I watched two sci-fi movies today. Supernova and The Black Hole. Neither are the “classic” by that name, but newer and if anything, worse. Worse because you’d think after all this time movies could actually afford to have a science adviser that could tell them they’re making complete idiots of themselves. Actually, maybe they do have advisers. Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. And in these cases, they most certainly didn’t. Let’s take a second to hit the highlights on the lack of any conformity to high school level physics knowledge.

First in Supernova we have our sun about to go supernova. Okay, we can stop right there. Our sun would need to be about half again its current mass at the very least, so the very premise is already impossible. But wait, there’s more. Why is it going supernova? Because a planetoid crashed into it. Never mind the fact that you could dump the rest of the solar system (which, including ALL the planets, is less than 0.2% of the mass of the sun) into it without causing much more than a ripple. But no, this single planetoid has “punched a hole” in the sun and caused it to become unstable. The instability causes Coronal Mass Ejections which, for some unexplained reason, seem to be aimed at the Earth time and time again. But wait, there’s more. Despite the fact that CME’s are huge energetic clouds of gas larger than the Earth itself, in the movie, they arrive as swarms of little fireballs that rain down and blow up individual buildings. UGH! And the solution to the problem of the impending supernova requires a suspension of disbelieve far above the capacity of this viewer. In most ways, the biggest problems with this movie revolve around the fact that the writers were incapable of understanding anything about the scope of what they were trying to meddle with.  The sun is just too big to fiddle with, and CMEs are just to big and diffuse to cause any problems on less than a hemispheric scale.

Next up is The Black Hole, in which an “accident” with a particle collider causes a black hole to form in St. Louis. Obviously based of the nonsensical ravings against the Large Hadron Collider, this movie quickly goes from the absurd to the disparagingly laughable. Quick lecture in two points. First: The energies produced by the Large Hadron Collider are of a lesser order of magnitude  then the energetic collisions taking place every second in our upper atmosphere between air molecules and cosmic rays. If those collisions haven’t created a black hole in the last few billion years, the LHC isn’t going to be any worry. Second: Assuming a black hole was formed, it would be a microscopic black hole which would flash out of existence in a few microseconds due to Hawking Radiation. Despite what you may have learned about black holes, they do actually emit energy due to quantum mechanical effects at the event horizon. And the smallerl the hole, the faster they evaporate.

So in the movie, we have an impossible event, creating something that wouldn’t actually be of any danger at all.  Furthermore, any black hole that did form, would be subject to gravity like anything else. And since gravity is a universally attractive force, the black hole would fall into the earth (the larger gravity field) and make its way to the core in no time at all before being snuffed by the aforesaid laws of physics. But that would make a short and pointless movie. So instead we get a full scale black hole, hovering over the ground, and eating St. Louis. Interestingly enough, the black hole appears to think (like Khan in Star Trek 2) in two dimensions. Instead of gobbling everything up all around it, it swirls like water going to down the kitchen sink, slowly expanding outwards, but letting helicopters fly over it with impunity. Now we get the part that REALLY doesn’t make any sense. If we ignore physics (and boy do we ever), there’s not much one can do to stop a black hole that’s on the rampage. So we get the addition of an alien entity that uses the black hole as a transit system from planet to planet, and feeds it by sucking in electricity. And “all” we have to do to save the Earth is kick the alien back through the black hole and all will be well again. Gayle and I yelled the solution at the TV about 15 minutes in when the alien first started moving around. Pity it took until 15 minutes from the end for the protagonist to think of it as well.

Okay, that’s enough ranting for now. But be warned, there are two more movies in the collection, and as soon as my craw can take it, we’ll dive into those stinkers as well. When? You’ll be the second to know.

Woke up to find the house surrounded in fog.  At first I didn’t notice because the rain was pattering on the sky light and it was rather dark.  Once I got up and looked out there was fog, the thin grey blanket type over, around, and cloaking everything.  It made for the kind of grey, lazy day where you just spend your time catching up on all the little chores you’ve been meaning to do.

Picked up the kitchen and cleaned the counters and stove top.  Then started on the big job.  Taking down the Christmas tree.  Wish we could leave it alone since my back has been quirky for days now.  But, it’s not the decorating statement I want to make.  The hold up was having to replace the ornament boxes which we’ve had for years and were more tape than box now.  So, lots of shopping and checking in stores as we did errands over the last couple of weeks and found a couple of reasonable substitutes.  It seems that ornament boxes have become tiny little things that won’t hold ornaments — go figure.  So, today we took all the ornaments off the tree and got them packed up.  We started going branch by branch to pull the branches towards the center: you know when you separate and fluff them when you put the tree up that you just have to squeeze them all down again.  Got about 1/6th of it done.   Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll finish that bit of it and get the tree apart, wrapped, and stored.  Then it’s clean the living room and rearrange the furniture and the plants.

Meanwhile, I’m almost done with a sock … maybe another 1/2 inch and bind off. Then start the second one.  I joined the Rocking Sock Club and I’m really looking forward to the first package.  I’ve never joined a sock club before but heard a lot about this one.  I  just never remembered about it during the signup period.

I’ve found the black yarn for the bear’s face so hope to get that done tomorrow or at the very least over the next week. I’ve been finishing things lately and that’s a good thing.  Got the cowl done.  Just need to sew in the ends and block.  Should have pictures up for that soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading in all the in between times to get my commitments for reviews done this month.  Trying to catch up and arrange some interviews before it gets too late, too.

Gumshoe Review published it’s first original short story this month.  We’ve already chosen the story for February.  We hope to have a new story featured each month.  This is a new venture for us and we’re still working out how to streamline the system: reading the submissions, ranking them, going over our favorites, notifying the authors whether we’re interested or not.  We’re getting better but still need to get a system that’s easy for us to deal with and make swift decisions for the sake of the authors.

Nevertheless, I still feel even though I got a lot done today that I’m still running in place rather than moving forward.

Today was sort of a loss on getting the home/house/shopping stuff done because I had a Capclave Committee Meeting scheduled this afternoon.

Nearly the entire committee was in attendance and those who couldn’t make it sent their reports.  It looks like we’re on track for memberships compared to previous years at this time.  This year Capclave will be capping membership at 500.  So, if you’re dithering please sign up soon. Right now the membership cost is $45.  There will be another price increase on July 1st.  So, the longer you wait the more expensive it gets.

Capclave will be from October 22 to 24th, 2010 at the Rockville Hilton.  Guests of Honor are: Connie Willis, Ann VanderMeer, and Jeff VanderMeer.  Check out our website and the Capclave blog.

We’re putting together ideas for programming. We could use your input on what panels and workshops you’d like to see at the convention. Really, let us know. Email programming with your ideas and suggestions.

If you’d like to volunteer some of your time to help out at the convention, send me email and let me know what area you’d like to work in and how many hours you’d be willing to commit. We’ll be putting a volunteer form up on the Capclave site soon but you can let me know by emailing me earlier.

Now to knit some more on my sock. Have a good evening everyone.

It’s been a heck of a month. It seems like all month, I’ve been running as fast as I can just to stay in place. There’s been so much going on. So, finally, here is the May Coffee Cup. It’s bright and cheery and I’ve been enjoying it all month. It’s just the right size to fill and sip on at the computer and the coffee stays relatively warm in it. Though I have to admit that I will drink my coffee hot, warm, tepid, and cold. Comes from years of work in IT where often you’d forget to go heat it up if you were deep in the code and on the right track.

We’ve been moving the zines from one host to another. That means transferring the DNS and that means a lot of backups and waits to see when the change would go through and the administrative functions were disabled and all I could do was let the work pile up. We’re nearing the end of the month and tonight the last magazine is being moved and the administrative functions restored. The email addresses are being reinstated on the new server and hopefully they’ll work okay. There’s a bit of a problem with sending email out and I’m hoping that gets resolved before I have to send out the notification to the publishers that a review is now up on our site. The monthly announcement can, if necessary, be sent from another server as a backup plan — hopefully we won’t need it.

So, I’ve been trying to get more books reviewed this month and have managed to do several graphic novels for the June issue of SFRevu, including Jim Butcher’s The Dresden FIles: Storm Front: Vol. 1, The Gathering Storm adaptation by Mark Powers and illustrated by Ardian Syaf (so check out our June issue for the review.

We’ve managed to keep the bird feeder going. We thought the little guys were going to eat us out of house and home but now that it’s getting into late Spring/Summer we’re finding that while they still cluster about the feeder, the birds aren’t eating as much. We do have a Tufted Titmouse that is coming about and fluttering at the windows by where we sit in the living room. Not the window closest to the feeder but the ones where we sit. He’s even been at the kitchen and the dinning room window when I’m there doing something. The hummingbirds are back in force and we’re making food regularly for them. We had to buy a new feeder since they didn’t like one of them and now they’re eating from both of them.

We’ve had some new birds show up also. We started getting Yellow Finches, Tufted Titmouse (Titmice?), Blue Jays, Brown Headed Cowbirds, and a strange looking black bird we haven’t gotten a good look at yet. I’m enjoying trying to identify the birds that stop by and I’m getting a better understanding of why people enjoy bird watching.

I’ve also been knitting. Trying out new techniques and more importantly trying to finish up some projects that have been sitting around for a while. First, I’m trying to keep socks on the go all the time for traveling and away from the house waiting times. I finally tried the magic caston. I watched the youtube video. Well, actually there are several just search on Magic Caston and a long list shows up. I tried several before I found one that worked for my brain. The others were well done but I just didn’t get it until I meshed with the right video.

I used an after-thought heel and did a very loose cast off for the cuff on these toe-up socks. That makes it easier to get them on if they shrink a bit in the wash. Here’s a photo of the needles in for the after-thought heel and another of the finished socks (well, one finished sock though I’ve got both done now).

So, in spite of the fact that I’m running as fast as I can to just stay in place, I might just have accomplished some stuff this month — or rather I hope I will. I don’t know how other people cope with unexpected or even expected inconveniences that through their schedules all out of whack. Luckily for me, I cope with these things by either knitting or reading — too things that I need to do anyway. How do you cope?

I’ve been rushing to finish up the second sock that I’ve been knitting. Well, actually I want to finish up a number of projects that have just a bit left to go  because I want to start several new ones. So, I thought I’ll finish this sock then the sweater, then the next three things and then start the new stuff.

But on the very last row of the after-thought heel as I was turning it inside out to do the 3-needle bindoff — I dropped a stitch. It’s a stripped sock on number 2 needles and the stripe at the end was black… I’m sure you know where I’m going. At the moment, I’m unknitting down to where the stitch ran but it keeps running so I think I’m going to end up at the start of the heel again.

My grandmother had a saying for times like these — “the faster I go the behinder I get.” That’s how I feel right now. This whole day has been like that. Maybe knitting is sort of a metaphor for life. You run along great and then unlike real life you get an opportunity for do-overs. Well, I suppose you get opportunities for do-overs in real life too but they’re much more painful than with knitting. I can unravel knitting and just start over but with life there’s all the other connections with events and people and those can’t be just unraveled as if they never were to start from scratch again.

Yarn might be a bit kinked from being unraveled but basically it’s very forgiving — people, well, not so much. So, I guess I’m lucky that it’s only the stocking’s heel that’s giving me problems. So, I guess I’ve now talked myself into a better state of mind about the bungled heel and the dropped stitch. This is just another of knitting’s do-overs.

I hate this — I’ve things to do and all that jazz and I think I’m coming down with a cold. Sore throat and a headache that won’t quit today. I read the same page at least 8 times and the only reason I caught myself was I kept starting to write a note and found I already had one written.

Now that makes for a wasted day. Finally I gave up and watched 50 First Dates — figured if my memory was going down the tubes I might as well watch a movie where someone had a worse memory than I did. I love the scene with the little penguin waiting on the road and she drives right over him…. Can’t imagine what the video would say while she was pregnant — can you?

I knit on my sock a bit today; just a few rows. Ended up pulling it out three times yesterday until I ended up with the right feel to it. It was just way too big the first time. If fit okay but didn’t look right and then I realize I had it on over my thick socks. So, ripped out about 4 inches and decreased and knit it back up. Then looked at it and it had this weird bump after the toe increased and before I decreased. So, out it came again — this time down into the toe increases stopping at the increase that gave me 64 stitches. I knew I’d done it wrong by not going all the way back but I thought I could live with it and I couldn’t. So, now I’m working on getting it up to the heel again. Then I have to decide if I want a short row heel, and after-thought heel, or an upside down heel. I’m thinking after-thought now but I’ve got about 2 inches to go to make up my mind.

Anyway, hoping to get back in step with some sort of schedule soon — yeah, real soon now. Doesn’t that sound like the check is in the mail talk? I’m sick of rain already but we’ve got a few more days of it to go.

Haven’t had much time to think, let alone posts.  But, my hubby found that absolutely wonderful knitting cartoon. You’ll find it Wondermark #491.

I mean really, some men just don’t understand the need for knitting.

My hubby thought I’d get a kick out of it because every trip we take, I spend more time trying to decide how much or which knitting projects to take. Then there’s the decision about what to take carry on and what to check through. If the yarn is really, really nice I hate checking it through … what if they loose my bag — it’s happened so it could happen when there’s yarn.

Meanwhile, working on getting the zines up and ready to go live on Sunday, March 1st. Desperately trying to finish up my reviews and overview of the zines in time. Also, proofing, editing, and tracking down missing content. But they’re going to be great issues.

I even had a review of my new ASUS Eee PC 1000 in TechRevu this week. Got some more things lined up to review over the coming months.

Finished one sock and I’m nearly done with the other one. Will do a photo of the pair soon. Also, got to finish my bears this weekend so will hopefully have a series of photos on making the faces and putting the arms and legs on. So, things are coming along in my universe.

I still keep missing time though. I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find the time leaks but the seconds, minutes, and hours just seem to be slipping past. So, far this month I’ve managed to keep it down to seconds and minutes rather than days and this is even a short month. I’m hoping the lost time is in a corner somewhere and with spring cleaning I’ll find it and can keep it in a bottle and pull out extra time when I need it. It’s a thought anyway.