Look! Up in the Sky!

Well, it's already over, and we survived, but today we had an asteroid (Asteroid 2011MD) in near-Earth space! Luckily, it wasn't a collision, although they said it was small enough to burn up in the atmosphere! If you click the link, you'll see a diagram of the way Earth gravity has disturbed it's trajectory.

We are also having a meteor shower. The June Bootids are expected to peak tonight, but will continue on for a bit, and you might still see one or two on the fourth (if you can distinguish it from the fireworks).

If you want to gear up to get out and watch meteors, check out this site. It's full of great hints! You might want to get out tonight to watch, even if you don't see to much because it will be good training for the Perseids shower that happens in the early part of August. This is one of he biggest, and My personal favorite because it peaks right before my birthday, so I always thought of it as my own, personal birthday fireworks. It's one of the many things I really enjoyed about Pennsic.

If you read the article on Pennsic on Wikipedia (the link above), it says that the kingdom with the most war points wins. What it doesn't say is that the loser has to take Pittsburgh!

Even if you're familiar with Pennsic, you should read the article. It has some funny parts, such as:

Contrary to popular myth, the Pennsic wars were not caused by Cariadoc challenging himself to a war and losing.

If you're interested, it inspired a mystery called Murder at the War, which is a lot of fun. It follows a mythical murder set at an early Pennsic, and shows a lot of the flavor of going to Pennsic. If you read it, it has a few errors in it (notably, people are not automatically entitled to be called lord or lady--people you don't know may be called that because you wouldn't want to offend someone by assuming they're not nobility).

Well, I got off the topic there!

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I've gotten back to my work on the mobius hat with cables. I need to take the photos and write up the instructions for the Screaming Knitfit version of the plain mobius set. Hopefully, that means that there will be some photos on my blog soon.

Here's a photo of the original:

The new and improved instructions will include a star as well as the heart, which is shown on this hat (for my granddaughter, Kyle, whose last name is LaHart.


I spent Saturday charting out a double-sided cable for the cowl and I've started that part of the knitting. It's going more slowly than most knitting since there are a lot of cable crossings!

I also spent a while trying to chart a double sided cable that starts at the beginning of the scarf. That really twisted my brain into Celtic knots all by itself. In other words, I'm trying to make it a stand-alone cable, whereas the others are continuous.

I still haven't gotten it right. The problem is that you really have to write the instructions for the cables on both sides at once.

I'll be back with another post soon.

In the meantime, it's Summer! Get out there and have some fun!

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The Persieds Meteor Shower!

There's a thunderstorm rolling in, and I want to get this post up fast, and get my computer turned off, so this will be a short post.

The Persieds Meteor Shower will be at it's best tonight! Don't miss it! It's one of my favorite things about Pennsic, and one of the things I like best about what the universe does to celebrate my birthday!

There's more stuff about it on the internet (check your favorite search engine), but I wanted to get something up here before I got off the computer.

While I'm on the subject of celestial stuff, there's been a new asteroid discovered, and it tells us about the origin of our solar system!

I've been running around most of today gathering financial information for my yearly review here at the apartment I live in. My new eye doctor seemed to be really great, but she (and everyone else in her office) seem to be either having as much of a problem hearing as I do, or they just don't understand the English language.

I ask them for a note with a recommendation for Vitamin A, Billberry and Lutien for my eyes because the expenses incurred in taking those nutrients will help to lower my rent, and I get back "No, you don't need a prescription for that. You can buy it over the counter!" After ten minutes of speaking loudly and clearly, they still didn't get it.

I didn't get the recommendation, either.

Even though they said that taking that stuff is good for my eyes.

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Well, the last of the information needs to be in tomorrow, so it'll all be over, one way or the other by the end of the day.

Hope you're having a better day than I've been having! Enjoy the meteor shower tonight!