etc.

Knitters will know what I’m talking about. Sometimes you read a pattern and it makes no sense at all and no matter how hard you try, your mind’s eye can’t see the stitches described transforming themselves into the knitted garment in the pattern’s picture. Lady Eleanor is my faith-based knitting project du jour. I’ve been admiring the stole all over knit-blogland (note: faith-based knitting is easier when others have gone before you and been successful), so I know it can be done. Last week, my copy of Scarf Style arrived and I cast on. On faith.

This is Silk Garden #86, which astute readers with better memories than mine, might recall was the yarn I used for Klaralund, lo those many months ago. Well, I’m not sure I ever did tell you, but Klaralund, once seamed, ended up too small for me by some bizarre error of gauge or pattern, I can’t remember which. Of course, once I’d done all that seaming, I didn’t have the heart to rip it all out, so I left her folded on a shelf and told myself that if I were to ever find another pattern for the yarn, I’d rip then. Which is what I did last week, during a rare mid-week day off. I’m not sure how many of you have ripped a Silk Garden garment from beginning to end, it’s not an easy yarn to frog, it breaks easily and sheds ridiculously, but press on I did, with eager anticipation urging me on.

So, yes, entrelac is faith-based knitting, but it’s easier than you can ever imagine, and plenty of fun to knit, especially with a lovely yarn like Silk Garden. And, oh, the texture! When I held it up to show the mister, he said, “cool. It’s 3D.”

When your charge for the day is to dismantle the Christmas tree and put away the decorations (yes, we’ve kept it up this long; yes, it’s been nice & festive in here while grey february rages on outside our windows; yes, we’re lazy;) but what you really want to do is noodle around your websites and server and neaten up a bit, what do you do? Why noodle, of course! And redesign while you’re at it!

So, another redesign here at etc. hq. The theme is Ambiru, a brand new theme from Phu Ly over at If..Else. I wasn’t ready to abandon the single-column layout but have been despairing a bit lately at the relatively low number of single-column options available out there in the WordPress theme world, until I stumbled upon Phu’s “theme a day” feature this morning (I installed another one of Phu’s lovely designs on my other blog, too).

For me, the main draw of this theme is the header image, love a decent amount of headspace devoted to a striking image. The image above is one of my pictures from Cuba (here’s the unadulterated version), this cold, grey month brought on the sudden need for a bright, warm image. I went a bit dizzy in Photoshop this morning, cropping and saturating like crazy, adding noise, and finally a lens flare. I had no idea that this was the look I was going for until I got here.

Also, a new tagline, for which you can thank a recent Bowie spell.

Let me know if any of this is broken or just plain horrible on your monitors, would you? I know you will, you’re all so good like that.

patron: (points to my moleskine datebook) Is that the Bible?
me: Well, sort of. It’s my bible. It’s my datebook.
patron: (looks at me like I am the spawn of Satan then asks reference question)
me: (answers reference question)
patron: and, by the way, are you familiar with the Bible?
me: yes.
patron: Good. So you know that Jesus loves you?
me: (long pause, quizzical look on face) Ummm…yes?
patron: Good.

• I would like another cat (a third!), a brand new, squeaky kitten, but the mister is quite firm on this point. So are the existing cats, they won’t have any part of it. Damn them.
• I am knitting the exitsing cats a blanket, one they will have to share because, while I have good intentions and plan on knitting two, I know that I will make it to the end of the first and say to them, “there isn’t a chance I’m making another one of these, my dears; you will have to share.” I’m using Lion Suede (in ecru), which is a heavy, soft, chenille-like yarn, which isn’t tons of fun on the needles, but oh! the feeling of the knit fabric between my fingers, it’s delightful. I think the cats will enjoy it, even if they have to wrestle for it.
• I’m weary to-day. I’ve been weary for a few days. I am ready for Spring.
• At the moment, my teevee roster includes Lost, Veronica Mars, Project Runway, The Sheild, Battlestar Galactica, and 24. As you can see, it’s a pretty substantial roster, but I hardly ever talk about these shows at all here. I’m not sure why that is, exactly, except that I watch most of this teevee peripherally, with my laptop on my lap, while I do interwebby things. Like right now, for example, I am blogging while Jack pulls out an arrow from the shoulder of an “other”. If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about; it’s not quite worth explaining, so my apologies to non-teevee-viewers.
• Last week, I bought an issue of The New Yorker. I haven’t bought The New Yorker in ages, months, maybe years, and all of a sudden I feel like I need to incorporate some decent vocabulary into my regular communications. Words like vernal and behest. Anyway, decent vocabulary aside, there is a very good article by Malcolm Gladwell that deals with how to solve the problem of homelessness rather than manage it (which is what most cities do) using power-law theory. As Gladwell says, the theory is economically sound (it costs less to rent homes for the homeless than it does to run shelters and provide other such services, including health care) but morally problematic (giving a free apartment to a homeless person is not “fair” when there are plenty of people who are not homeless but living below the poverty line & struggling to make ends meet). We have a dire homeless situation in this here city, and I have no good ideas on how to solve it, so I’m always keen to read what others have to say on the subject, even if I have slight philosophical reservations with their solutions.

Now, I don’t usually go for web quizzes and random-generator-bloggy-things, but how could I possibly resist this one, on account of the medieval content? I couldn’t! Just, couldn’t, I tell you! [spotted at nipperknits]

• Two for the Money *
• Cinderella Man ****
• King Kong ****
• Flight Plan **
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear ***
• The 40 Year Old Virgin **
• Wedding Crashers ***
• Scary Movie 2 **
• Cry Wolf ***

A whole bunch of feature-film-mediocrity lately. Except for Cinderella Man, which was surprisingly good, even for someone with a pretty strict Russell-Crowe-moratorium (that would be me). And I liked King Kong well enough, 3-hours flashed by without a single glance down a my watch, a good sign. And, it would be remiss of me not to say more about The Librarian, wouldn’t it? I liked it better than I thought I would, it was a silly sort of Indiana Jones, with a geeky bookish type as a protagonist, but what did I expect? Noah Wyle was alright, there were giggles to be had at lines like, “the Librarian, he’s incredible” and “he’s just a librarian, but he could be so much more.” Heh.

While I was busy conferencing last week, Wiarton Willy didn’t see his shadow and Punxsatawney Phil did. Early Spring for some of us and 6 more weeks of Spring-like weather for the others. It’s been an odd Winter.

Sorry about the whining and kvetching last week. The last couple of weeks of intense writing and revising made me realise two things: writing makes me immensely happy and writing deadlines make me fidgety and anxious. So everytime I have a looming article/chapter deadline, I become a mess of nervous excitement. It’s hard to explain. I figure that the only way to get over the fidgety part is to do more regular writing, so I’m now on the hunt for a regular writing gig. In my world, this means writing for a library journal or library association magazine. Updates as progress warrants.

I gave a presentation at the Super Conference a couple of days ago and blogged about it very briefly here. For any library types who might be interested, I also blogged most of the conference sessions I attended, which you can read about here.